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ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 65
It would require too much space to explain all the
marks of distinction that were due Madame as an enfant
de France. That she always drove in her coach with
eight horses, indeed, was not one of these. She herself
writes in this connection: "Since the Queen began to
drive with eight horses I have never had less. The first
to begin it was the late Due de la Feuillade. We need
it because our coaches are very heavy. There is no rank
about it; whoever wishes to drive with eight horses
can do so. As I said before, it is a good forty years
that I have driven with eight horses to my coach; but
in a caleche I usually drive with only six. It makes me
laugh that you, dear Louisa, should think I drive this
way with eight horses because I am the first lady. I
am not too proud, but all the same I do keep up my
dignity, as is proper."
Madame seems to have had a special crown of her
own ; we see it as an accessory of her portrait (see frontis-
piece). She also had a right, just as the King did, to a
dais and to a balustrade shutting off her bed from the
rest of the room.
The King's bedchamber seems to have been regarded
almost as sacred ground. It is to this room that the
following description of Felibien applies: "A great arch
coming down low serves, on the west side, opposite the
windows, to increase the depth of this room and to make
a more suitable place for the King's bed. Two figures of
66 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
women seated on the archivolt hold trumpets in their
hands to represent fame. All the interior vaulted sur-
face is covered with a gilded compartment, with frames
and rosettes forming a sort of mosaic on a white back-
ground. It is there that they have represented, in the
same expanse of the vault, France seated on a heap of
weapons under a rich canopy. It is sculptured in wood
entirely gilded. The rest of the same alcove, under the
cornice which separates the vault, is stretched in winter
with tapestry, and the bed they have placed there is
new and of a design as beautiful as it is magnificent. It
is of crimson velvet covered with embroidery, so inter-
woven with gold that one can scarcely discern the back-
ground. One sees, too, in this room four portieres of
tapestry with a gold background, the ornaments of
which, ingeniously worked in, and the life-size figures,
represent the four seasons.
We learn from the Etat de la France of 1708, published
with the royal sanction, that: "They usually make the
King's bed while his Majesty is at mass. In making it a
valet de chambre stands on either side and an upholsterer
at the end. A valet de chambre sits within the balus-
trade to guard the bed, and at meal times one of his
comrades is careful to relieve him. This valet de chambre
has care of the bed and must prevent any one from ap-
proaching it at any part of the balustrade. . . . One of
the valets de chambre on duty is to guard the King's bed
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 67
all day long, keeping within the balustrade. . . . The
ushers are to see that no one puts on his hat, combs his
hair, or sits down in the room, on the seats, on a table,
or on the balustrade of the alcove. . . . When the
King leaves Versailles for a few days, a valet de chambre
remains to guard the bed and sleeps at the foot of his
Majesty's bed."
When the King travelled, he was preceded by another
bed and by a whole set of wall hangings, so that in the
morning when he woke it was always amid practically
the same surroundings.
Madame held her levee in the morning just as the
King did, but of course with less ceremony. Late in
life she describes her levees : in the essentials the pro-
ceedings were always the same, for it was a common
thing in the ceremonial of the court of France to point
to precedents a hundred or a hundred and fifty years old.
Madame relates, then, that she would wake in the morn-
ings at half-past four; would ring, have .her fire made
and her room put in order; meanwhile she would be
saying her morning prayer. About half-past five she
would rise, put on a good pair of stockings of otter skin,
a cloth petticoat, and over this a long, good, wadded
dressing-gown fastened at the waist with a great broad
belt. Then she would have two candles lighted and sit
down to her writing-table, where she would remain until
half-past ten. At that hour she would send for her
68 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
honey water, wash herself as clean as she could, and
rub her aching knee and calf [this is in her old age]
with eau vulneraire which the doctor had prescribed.
After this operation she would summon all her women
of the bedchamber and sit down to her toilet, to which
all persons, men and women alike, were admitted. She
would then be combed and coiffed. Then all the men
folk, except the doctor, barber, and apothecary, would go
out, and she would draw on her shoes, stockings, and
calegons and wash her hands. Next, her ladies in
waiting would come in to serve her, would hand her the
towel for washing and the chemise, after which all the
doctor tribe would go out, and the tailor would come in
with her dress; this she would put on right over the
chemise. She goes on to tell us that the moment she
was laced all the men folk would again come in. The
dress was so made that after the lacing she was quite
ready, the skirt being fastened to the bodice with hooks
and eyes, and the manteau, too, being sewn, or at least
hooked, to the bodice. She knows she is old-fashioned,
she writes, but she has no desire to ape the young people.
She is so accustomed to the calegons that she could not
go without them for a single day. They had formerly
been the fashion in France, and had been considered a
requirement of modesty. Madame de Durasfort, one of
her ladies, told her that her mother had worn them all
her life, and she herself too — so long as her mother
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ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 69
lived. But now the fashion has entirely changed, and
not a soul in France except her, Madame, ever wears
calegons. But she considers that they are healthful and
prevent colic.
In Madame's early days, if it was her privilege to have
the chemise handed to her by a lady of rank, she in turn
had to hand the Queen hers whenever she was present
at the latter's levee: "The Queen certainly did not
wear a hair shirt," Madame once writes. "I have seen
her naked hundreds of times when I, as is the custom
here, put on her Majesty's chemise for her. It is a cere-
mony. The first woman of the bedchamber gives the
chemise to the maid of honor, the maid of honor to me,
I to the Queen. If neither I nor one of the petits enfants
de France is there, but merely a princess of the blood,
the first woman of the bedchamber gives the chemise
to put on the Queen direct to her, and not first to
the maid of honor. We have many distinctions like
that."
Monsieur, who always handed the shirt very grace-
fully to the King, — one courtier was exiled because he
did so awkwardly, flapping the fringe of his sleeve in
the King's face, — was punctilious in requiring the same
service from those next in rank to himself. The Due de
Bourbon had evidently registered a vow not to hand
Monsieur his shirt, and kept away from his levee. But
Monsieur, when in his dressing-gown, once saw him on
70 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
the terrace in front of his window, stepped out, engaged
him in conversation, backed slowly into his room, threw
off his dressing-gown, called for his shirt, and thus obliged
Monsieur le due, as he was called, either to hand it or
cause a scandal.
At the King's levee a great number of people took
part in the actual dressing, while a bevy of courtiers
stood by. The duties of each official were minutely
prescribed. One took the right, the other the left, sleeve
of the night shirt to take it off ; two others held the day
shirt in the same manner, and two more held up the
dressing-gown to momentarily screen the King from
view. A set of men with one title attended to the King's
right leg, a set of men with another to his left one. It
took a man for each article of clothing, while four in
turn had to taste the cup of bouillon or of sage tea that
the King drank. The courtiers assembled first in the
ceil-de-bmuf, or antechamber, and were admitted by re-
lays according to the kind of brevet that had been be-
stowed upon them. Some had the privilege of entering
without knocking, — or rather without scratching, for
the ceremonial prescribes that at the King's door one
shall always scratch softly, and never violently knock.
After the levee came the daily visit to the chapel, for
that was required of an enfant de France. Madame had
her own almoner, and liked him especially because he
could say mass in fifteen minutes. In Versailles, of
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 71
course, she went to the King's chapel. The one that
now stands there was not built until 1710.
The distinctions of rank were observed in chapel as
well as elsewhere. The King and the enfants had the
right, enjoyed by no one else in France except the clergy,
of taking both the bread and the wine at communion;
the enfants and the petits enfants, but no one else, might
kneel on the square of carpet, the drap de pied, reserved
for the King. The petits enfants, and presumably Ma-
dame herself, had a right to have special "clerks of the
chapel," as they were called, to hold tapers for them,
and to save them the trouble of making their own
responses.
The attendance at chapel was looked upon as a neces-
sary evil by the court, and Saint-Simon has an amusing
anecdote bearing on the subject. "Brissac, major of the
body-guards," he writes, " played the ladies a strange
trick. He was an upright man who could not endure
deception. It vexed him to see that all the tribunes of
the chapel were crowded in winter at vespers on Thurs-
days and Sundays, when the King never failed to be
present, and that scarcely one went when it was known
in good time that he was not coming. Moreover, under
pretext of reading in their prayer-books they all had
little candles in front of them so that they might be
seen and noticed. One evening when the King was ex-
pected at vespers, as they were saying in chapel the
72 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
evening prayer that precedes vespers when that service
is held, and all the guards had been posted and the ladies
had taken their places, the major arrives towards the
end of the prayer, and appearing in the empty tribune
of the King, raises his baton and cries aloud: 'Guards
of the King, retire ; go back to your halls, the King will
not come !' The guards at once obey — low murmurs
among the women, the little candles go out, and behold
them all departed, save the Duchesse de Guiche, Madame
de Dangeau, and one or two others who remain. Brissac
had posted brigadiers at the exits of the chapel to stop
the guards and make them resume their places so soon
as the ladies should be out of hearing. The King there-
upon arrives, is much astonished to see that the tribunes
are not filled with ladies, and asks how it happens that
no one is there. As they went out from vespers, Bris-
sac told him what he had done, not without descanting
on the piety of the ladies of the court. The King and
all his suite laughed heartily. The story spread im-
mediately ; all those women would have liked to strangle
Brissac."
Madame objected to going to chapel as much as any
of the ladies could have done; but she never thought
of shirking her duty. Unless prevented by illness, she
went daily to chapel for fifty years; it was required,
she tells us, of an enfant de France. Her abjuration at
Metz, though heralded throughout France as a wonderful
The Chapel
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 73
manifestation of the grace of God, had been perfunctory
in the extreme. "At Metz," she once writes, "I might
have said, with Madame de Chantecroix, que de sacre-
ments a lafois! for in one day they made me confess,
commune, marry, and be confirmed — all of which they
regard as sacraments." And again: "I do not know
what they made Princess Elizabeth say in her abjura-
tion. As for me they merely read something to which
I was to answer 'yes' or 'no/ which I did as I thought
best. Once or twice I said 'no' when they wished me
to say 'yes' ; but they let it pass. I had to laugh about
it myself." Although her own coachman once de-
nounced her as a heretic, she seems really to have been
allowed great latitude. She writes in 1709: "I said
recently to my father confessor, who tried to convince
me of something about the saints, 'Is belief in it neces-
sary to salvation?' He said, 'No/ 'Then,' said I, 'why
do you wish to torment me needlessly?' He said, 'One
must believe it to be a good Catholic' I said, 'You are
my third father confessor; two have already found my
faith sufficient, why do you try to force on me some-
thing new?' He said I must think him very silly not
to be willing to believe as he did. I said: 'That is just
what surprises me, that with your intelligence you can
believe such foolish things as are only fit for the com-
mon people. The way your nurses brought you up
must have influenced you greatly that you believe fairy
74 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
stories about the saints rather than the word of God
which so expressly forbids your making or bowing down
to graven images or putting your trust in any one save
His only Son. Had God wished us to put our trust in
the saints, He would have told us so. But you cannot
prove that He did, so I shall not change my devotions.
It is all right for those who know no better; but I who
do shall not allow myself to be put upon.' People came
in and disturbed our conversation; so it stopped there."
She tells us elsewhere of this father confessor that he
has a " faith like an old nun," but that in spite of many
a dispute they remain good friends, "for outside of
religion he is the best and most honest man in the world
... he understands chaff and is not easily angry."
She writes on another occasion: "My father con-
fessor and I often have great disputes, but I don't let
him get the better of me. What I can't endure is
that he expects the Protestants to be damned, and I
maintain to him that that is only monkish twaddle
and quibbling, and that all true Christians, whether
Catholic, Lutheran, or reformed, are all of one faith if
they love God, do not harm their neighbor, and concern
themselves with good works which are the proper fruits
of faith. I tell him that his opinion will never save or
damn any one ; and that, whatever he may say, I shall
never think differently. So your Grace sees that I often
dispute the harder for all the tedium the Latin blaring
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 75
causes me. To save my life I cannot endure such priestly
nonsense."
In another connection she says of the priests, "I
know the vermin only too well." "Vespers, sermon, and
mass may be good for the other world," she once writes,
"but they are bitterly wearisome in this;" and she
declares that she hates "to hear a fellow yelling in the
pulpit whom one may not even interrupt."
She had one refuge, sleep; and she slept even when
she sat next to the King. "His Majesty nudges me
with his elbow and wakes me up," she writes, "so that I
can neither get wholly to sleep nor keep wholly awake,
and that makes my head ache." But a month later
she writes: "His Majesty lets me sleep in sermon now."
She, of course, does not like to have the priest come
down hard with his fist on the edge of the pulpit, though
occasionally she rises superior to it. "We have just
come from church," she writes; "the preacher is said
to have thundered the whole time and to have brought
his fist down hard twice; but a sweet slumber hindered
me from hearing it."
She has special aversions among the priests: "The
Bible," she once writes, "speaks in such flowery and
figurative language that one can never know truth from
metaphor. But when I hear our King's long-eared
father confessor talk [she means Pere la Chaise] I don't
consider it so impossible that Balaam's ass spoke."
76 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
All this is most remarkable when we think of the
hundreds of thousands banished from France for their
beliefs and of the incredible cruelty and severity. But
the King had promised in Madame's marriage contract
not to coerce her in religious matters. She tells us that
once, indeed, he sent for her and said to her severely :
"How is this, Madame, I hear your son thinks of taking
a Jansenist into his service." "Oh, no," she replied,
"I can assure you, sir, he is no Jansenist, and I even doubt
if he believes in God." "Oh, well," said the King, "if
that is the case, and you are sure he is no Jansenist,
your son may take him."
After chapel came dinner. The King ate either en
petit convert — that is, alone while the courtiers stood
round him — or en grand convert — which latter ceremony
interests us particularly, for in it Madame always played
her part when she was in Versailles. The preparations
for it were as elaborate as those for a grand mass: "The
usher of the hall," says the ceremonial, "having received
the order for the King's convert, goes to the hall of the
body-guards, knocks on the door with the wand which is
the distinctive mark of his office, and says aloud, 'Sirs,
to the King's convert V Then, accompanied by a guard,
he goes to the gobelet. Then the chef du gobelet brings
the nef, the other officers bring the rest of the convert,
the body-guard marching near the nef, while the usher
of the hall, carrying the two table-cloths, is at the head,
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ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 77
wand in hand. In the evening he holds also a torch."
"This nef" the ceremonial explains, "is a piece of jewel-
ler's work, ordinarily of silver gilt, made in the form of
a dismasted ship. Tradition has it that this was a gift
made to one of our kings in the sixteenth century by
the city of Paris, of which the arms are a ship. How-
ever that may be, it is in this nef that are enclosed, be-
tween scented cushions, the napkins which are to be
presented to the King during the repast. When the
King is pleased to dine with full ceremony, it is placed
on one end of his Majesty's table, as will be explained
hereafter. On other days it is placed on the serving
table. But wherever it be placed, all persons who pass
in front of it, even the princesses, are bound to salute it,
just as they are bound to salute the King's bed when
they pass through his room. ..." The chef du gobelet
tastes the bread and the salt; "he touches also by way
of precaution the napkins, which are in the nef, and the
spoon, the fork, the knife, and the tooth-picks of his
Majesty, which are on the cadenas." The cadenas is a
gold box specially pertaining to the King.
Louis himself passed this regulation regarding the serv-
ing of the meat: "His Majesty's meat shall be served in
this order, — two guards shall march first, then the usher
of the hall, the maitre d'hotel with his baton, the gentleman
in waiting of the pantry, the comptroller general, the
comptroller clerk of the Office, and others who shall carry
78 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
the meat, the equerry of the kitchen, and the guardian
of the gold and silver plate, and behind them two other
guards of his Majesty who shall let no one approach the
meat."
Arrived at the table, the maitre d'hotel makes his bow
to the nef, and the food has to be tasted again for fear of
poison; three guards meanwhile have remained at the
serving table to see that nothing is tampered with.
Probably no man that ever lived in this world was less
alone than Louis XIV. At Versailles at least he had not
a single moment of the night or of the day entirely to
himself. In addition to those who were privileged to be
at his rising, at his going to bed, and at the intermediate
changing of the boots as well as at the meals, there were
several persons whose duty it was never to let him out of
their sight. There was the porte-manteau who was always
at hand to bring cloak, sword or hat, muff, cane or gloves,
cravat or handkerchief. If the King played tennis, the
porte-manteau had to hold the balls, and afterwards,
at his own expense (he had perquisites which compen-
sated), to give a dinner to the master of the tennis-court
and to all the officers of the wardrobe or the bedchamber
who had done duty at the game.
The ceremonial tells us further of the respective duties
of the captain of the French body-guards and the captain
of the "Hundred Swiss": "The captain of the French
body-guards marches behind the King, so as always to
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 79
have his eye on the person of the King, and the captain
of the Hundred Swiss marches in front, so that in both
directions they cover the person of his Majesty. . . .
The captain of the guards who is en quartier never quits
the King from the time he rises and leaves his chamber to
the time when he reenters it to go to bed." He " stands
and walks always directly after the King and next to his
person wherever he is outside of his chamber: at table,
on horseback, in his chair, his coach, and everywhere else,
no one whatever being allowed to place himself, or to
pass, between him and the King. At the King's dinner
and supper the captain of the guards en quartier is always
behind his Majesty's arm-chair."
Madame, too, had her captain of the guards. There
is no evidence that she was in any way pursued as the
King was, but she was doubtless well protected.
After meals Madame was handed a napkin, just as the
King was, by some great personage. The napkin was
moistened at one end, and she always speaks of the per-
formance as " washing." Madame, like Monsieur, was
always very punctilious about these ceremonies. Saint-
Simon calls her " small in the extreme where it was a
matter of exacting her due" ; but it must be remembered
that no one could possibly have been smaller in that
respect than Saint-Simon himself.
At the wedding of her step-daughter, which took place
at Fontainebleau in 1679, there was a question as to who
80 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
should carry Madame's train. It was more honorable,
it seems, to have it carried by a lady than by a man, and
the contention was that at the marriage of Charles IX
the trains of his sisters had been carried in that way.
The King consulted Sainctot, the master of ceremonies,
who told him that there was some doubt about the matter.
"But the King," writes Sainctot himself, "wishing to
oblige Monsieur, told him that if a single case could be
found where Dauphinesses had had their trains carried by
ladies he would gladly accord the same honor to Madame.
I alleged to him that at the wedding of Madame Claude
de France in 1552 Madame de Brienne had carried the
train of the Dauphiness. So the matter was decided as
Monsieur desired."
During this same wedding ceremony the king at arms
and the heralds had to summon Monsieur to take his
place near the altar — by a bow or salutation ; but
they did this out of sight of the King. "Monsieur and
Madame," writes Sainctot, "had claimed that the salute
should be formal, or in other words from the same place
from which the King was saluted. The King paid no
heed to this pretension, which had already been formu-
lated in vain at the creation of Knights of the Holy Spirit
in 1662."
There were other fine points decided at this wedding.
The King signed as tres haut, tres puissant, et tres excellent,
Monsieur was tres haut et tres puissant, the King's bastards
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ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 81
tres hauts et puissants, and the foreign princes, as they
were called [the Lorraines, etc.], merely hauts et puissants.
When the moment came for signing, the enfants de France
and the petits enfants had the pen handed them by great
personages ; but the princes of the blood had to take the
pen themselves from the cornucopia. Two of them,
the Prince of Conde and the Due de Bourbon, had stayed
away from the wedding because, they claimed, the pen
should be handed to them — and by the same person,
the secretary of state, whose duty it was to hand it to the
King's granddaughters. When kneeling in chapel during
the ceremony, Monsieur's second daughter as well as
the grande Mademoiselle and her two sisters found them-
selves obliged to kneel on the King's drap de pied in such
a way that their feet were entirely outside. But Sainctot,
writing for ages to come, declares, "That is the place
where their feet ought to be, and that is what they had
hitherto not at all observed."
The wedding procession itself must have been one of
the most magnificent sights imaginable — especially to
an age that had not yet been corrupted by the tawdry
gorgeousness of the theatre. First came heralds, then
Knights of the Holy Spirit in their velvet and ermine
robes, then guards, drummers, trumpeters, and others,
and then the King. Then came the Queen in a dress
embroidered with gold and silver and a mantle of Span-
ish point lace, in length, as we have said, twenty-
82 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
seven feet and bordered with deep silver lace. . . . Ma-
demoiselle, the bride, was clad a la royale. She wore on
her head a crown of gold enriched with diamonds and
closed by four quarter circles with the fleurons of Spain.
Her mantle was of violet velvet lined with ermine
three inches deep and with three rows of golden fleurs-
de-lis. The train was eighteen feet long. Four dozen
fleurs-de-lis were scattered about the extremity of the
train. "But," says the master of ceremonies, "the King
objected to these four dozen fleurs-de-lis and ordered
me to remark in my registers that it had been done con-
trary to his intention."
Louis took everything concerning this Spanish wedding
with the utmost seriousness. On the day following the
ceremony he visited the new Queen and sat in an arm-
chair between her and his own Queen. Suddenly, finding
that it was late, he said: "Madame, you are the Catholic
Queen and I am the most Christian King. I do not think
we ought to miss the mass. We will go to chapel when
you are ready."
At the marriage of Madame's second step-daughter, in
1684, — she married a Duke of Savoy and later became
Queen of Sicily, — the court was in mourning for the
French Queen, so the gown for the betrothal was of black
cloth, but weighted down with pearls and diamonds.
At the wedding itself she wore silver brocade with bouton-
nieres of diamonds; while the Due du Maine, who stood
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 83
proxy for the husband, was in " breeches, doublet, and
mantle of silk material covered with lace and enriched
with diamonds."
Madame, like the King, received ambassadors. Her
coach went to meet them on their arrival, and the officers
of her household went to pay their respects. But the
ambassador was not obliged to descend so many steps
to greet them as he did in the case of the King's officers ;
nor, after seeing them to their coaches, was he obliged
to wait until the coaches drove off.
On the day of the audience Madame would await the
ambassador in an arm-chair, with the duchesses sitting
on tabourets around her, and her ladies standing. As
the ambassador approached he made three low bows.
Madame rose and remained standing throughout the
audience. The ambassador had a right to keep his hat
on in her presence, but it was a right which politeness
forbade his using. On retiring he made three more bows
and backed out the length of the room.
If it was merely an envoy and not an ambassador,
Madame remained seated, making only a slight inclina-
tion of the head when he came and when he went. We
have a speech that a Siamese ambassador made to Madame
when having his farewell audience in 1686. It shows
what an important person he, at least, considered her.
" Very great Princess," he began, "our sojourn in France
has caused us even to increase our original high esteem
84 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
for all the great qualities that are admired in you. It is
no little consolation to us that our long journey to Europe
and our return to Asia may be of service to your glory by
giving us occasion to spread your name further and
further, even to the remotest kingdoms. We shall an-
nounce everywhere in our own what we know of your
greatness and of the striking merit that distinguishes you ;
and soon you shall hold the same place in the esteem of
the King, our master, that you hold here in the mind
and heart of Louis the Great."
One may consider this language exaggerated, but it did
not so greatly differ from what Madame was accustomed
to hear from those around her. Take, as an example,
this letter from one of her ladies, the Marquise d'Alluye,
who was lying on her death-bed: "I am dying, divine
Princess. The fever that attacked me yesterday has so
weakened me that Father Gaillard has ordered me to
receive the last unction. Believe me, my Princess, so
long as a moment of life wards off the misfortune of
forever being deprived of your dear presence, it will
console me for everything. At least grant me a moment
in your -precious recollections. If the dead feel anything,
m y joy will be perfect."
The doings of this Siamese embassy of 1686 are alto-
gether interesting. It was a very pompous mission in-
deed. There were three ambassadors, eight mandarins,
and twenty domestics. "The first act of the first am-
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ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 85
bassador," writes Sainctot, in his account, "was to place
the letter of his royal master at the bedside in the room
of state in a machine which they call in their language
mordoc praUnan, in ours the lieu royal. Each day all the
ambassadors placed fresh flowers above the King's let-
ter, and as often as they passed the lieu royal, they made
profound bows. This mark of respect need not seem
strange. In my youth [he is writing about 1730] all the
old courtiers saluted the King's bed when they entered
his chamber, and also the nef. Some of the ladies of the
old court still courtesy to it." At the audience with the
King the machine du lieu royal was brought to the palace
and wheeled into the hall of guards. The first ambas-
sador, Sainctot tells us, took from it a gold box in which
the letter of the King of Siam was enclosed. He gave it
to a mandarin to carry on a gold saucer, making him walk
in front of him. Before the throne the mandarins pros-
trated themselves in the dust, and " they would have held
their faces to the ground the whole time, had not the King
given them permission to look at him. They had come
too far, he said, not to permit him to see them."
When an ambassadress visited Madame, the latter's
maid of honor went to the middle of the antechamber
to meet her, kissed her, and taking her left hand, led her
to Madame. The latter rose and remained standing near
her arm-chair. The ambassadress and the maid of honor
made courtesies; at the third one the ambassadress
86 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
bent down and kissed the hem of Madame's robe. The
latter then kissed the ambassadress and offered her a
tabouret.
This necessity of kissing the hem of the garment, which
applied to all women presented to the Queen, the Dau-
phiness, or Madame, was one of those most often disputed.
When Madame's Aunt Sophia visited the court, she was
determined not to kiss the Queen's robe because it had
not been required of her by the Empress. "The Queen
turned towards me/' she writes, "and . . . took her
robe with her hand to present it to me. But I was not
thirsting for it and contented myself with making her
a deep courtesy. Monsieur, who had seen the Queen's
gesture, laughed heartily, and remarked that she did the
same to his children, and that the little Due de Chartres
had said: 'Do you think I kiss her robe? I kiss my
own hand.'"
The reason for disregarding precedents established by
the Empress is explained in the ceremonial: "It is said
that the King of the Romans or Emperor is obliged in
certain cases to answer to the Count Palatine, and that the
Count may not exercise this jurisdiction save in a diet or
imperial court at which the Emperor or King of the Ro-
mans is personally present. This article detracts from
the dignity of the Emperor." In the same way Electors
are looked down upon by the court of France because,
by the Golden Bull: "Electors can be deposed and de-
ETIQUETTE AND PREROGATIVES 87
prived of their fiefs and dignities in case they contravene
the constitutions of the Empire. This article takes away
a great deal from the sovereignty of the Electors."
When Madame passed through a double door, it was
prescribed that both sides should be opened for her ; also
that, at Versailles, no lady should appear before her except
in grand habit, which seems to have meant any dress with
a train. She, in turn, unless in hunting costume, always
appeared in grand habit before the King. When she
danced at a ball, every one else had to rise. When she
walked through the palace, she was preceded by torch-
bearers and followed by her ladies.
In Madame's presence no men but cardinals and
princes (including, however, the King's legitimatized
sons) might sit. Women of rank might have a chair
with a back or a stool, but never an arm-chair. Duch-
esses were given this privilege of sitting — the privilege
of the tabouret, it was called — by brevet of the King.
Chancellors' wives were in the unfortunate position of
having the tabouret only in the morning. In the after-
noon they had to stand.
Madame, as I said, insisted on her rights with the ut-
most vehemence. " There is not a single ' apartment," 1
she writes in 1694, "at which I do not have to make
people stand up who are sitting down in my presence,
though they look me straight in the face. And the men
are worse than the women. Here they do not know what
88 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
respect means — they know the word, but not the thing
itself at all."
But she had subterfuges for those whom she loved or
specially wished to favor: when her half-brother came
to visit her, unable to offer him either a chair or a stool,
she piled the cushions against her dressing table and let
him stay there until the small hours of the morning ; and
many a time to spare her lady visitors she made them
pretend to play cards or do some fancy work where sitting
was a necessity ; or she met them in a nunnery where, out
of respect for the sacredness of the place, she, as well as
they, was obliged to stand.
Louis XIV tkkading on His Enkmiks
CHAPTER IV
Madame's Associates
It is time to speak more particularly of some of the chief
personages with whom Madame came in contact. The
Queen, Marie Therese, a Spanish infanta, was a perfect
nonentity. Madame writes of her later: " Our Queen was
excessively ignorant, but the kindest and most virtuous
woman in the world. She had a certain greatness in her
manner and knew how to hold court extremely well.
She believed everything the King told her, good or bad.
Her teeth were very ugly, being black and broken. This,
it was said, came from her being in the habit of eating
chocolate. She also frequently ate garlic. She was
short and fat, and her skin was very white. When she
was not walking or dancing, she seemed much taller.
She ate frequently and took a long time; but her food
was always cut in pieces small enough for a canary bird.
She could not forget her country, and her manners were
89
90 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
always remarkably Spanish. She was very fond of cards,
playing basset, reversi, ombre, and occasionally primero ;
but she never won, because she did not know how to play."
It may be added in this connection that one evening after
she had sacrificed 60,000 francs the King, who was always
the soul of courtesy to her, could not refrain from asking
how much, at that rate, her losses were going to amount
to in the course of the year. Madame continues: "She
had such an affection for the King that she used to watch
his eyes to do whatever might be agreeable to him; if
he merely looked kindly at her, she was happy for the rest
of the day."
This description of the Queen corresponds with that
given by Madame's aunt: "I found that she had an
extraordinarily white skin, and that she was much finer
looking near to than at a distance. For her figure was
not good. Her back was too rounded, and her neck
too short, which made her ungraceful. Her lips were
bright red, but her teeth were all black and spoiled. It
was always I who had to begin each topic of conversation.
I began by praising the court of France and told her she
could have had no trouble in accustoming herself to its
ways. She responded no, that she had had no trouble
at all, because she had been very happy there ; and she
said to me twice, 'The King loves me so; I am so
grateful to him.' I answered very properly that that
was not surprising, etc., and made her tell me how many
Phii-jppi mr. his
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The Quken as Infanta
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 91
children she had had. . . . Towards evening I was led
through a frightful crush, to see the grand ball. Be-
cause of my incognito I was placed behind the King and
Queen, next to Madame de Pomponne. I thought I
was witnessing the golden age, husband dancing with
wife, brother with sister. But it was a matter of grandeur
rather than of innocence, for each kept his rank, and
they danced more from ceremony than from enjoy-
ment. . . . The King made the best appearance, with
which the good Queen, his wife, accorded very badly,
making a very poor one. One would have said that
when the King danced with her, he was ashamed of her."
Madame has a passage about the Queen that is worth
quoting: "When our Queen of blessed memory fell down,
I ran right away. She wore very high shoes, fell often,
and said each time : 'Ah, je suis tombee! ' I could never
hear that without laughing and would run hastily into
the other room."
The Queen died in 1683. Madame writes: "To be
perfectly contented is dangerous to life. I remember
that the Tuesday before the Queen's death the King gave
her a fete at Versailles at a fountain called Enceladus.
This Enceladus is entirely surrounded by foliage. There
dinner was eaten and tables were set for playing, as in
the 'apartments.' There were all kinds of music, a
collation in the evening, and then we drove in open
caleches. It was the finest weather in the world, for it
92 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
was the end of July. When the Queen returned to her
room, she said to her favorite, Madame de Vize, whom
she called Philippa : ' Philippa, I never in my life had a
more agreeable fete; for I may say that at all the other
fetes the King has given I have had grounds for grievance ;
but at this one I have had perfect contentment.' On
Friday, at three in the afternoon, she was dead !"
The " grounds for grievance" were always Madame
de la Valliere, Madame de Ludres, Madame de Montespan,
Madame de Fontanges, or some other of the numerous
favorites. Madame de la Valliere was still at court
when Madame arrived. Not until 1674 did she renounce
the world and bury herself alive in the strict order of
the Carmelite nuns. But her glory had already departed,
and she endured the humiliation of serving her successful
rival, Madame de Montespan, as a sort of handmaid.
Madame tells a terrible story of the King's cruelty to his
former idol: "He used to pass through La Valliere's
chamber to go to Montespan's, " she writes ; "and one day,
at the instigation of the latter, he threw a little spaniel
which he had named 'Malice' at the Duchesse de la
Valliere, saying, 'There, Madame, is your companion;
that's all.' "
Madame always considered Madame de la Valliere more
sinned against than sinning, and formed a great friend-
ship with her, going to visit her in the nunnery. Indeed,
she was present at the taking of the veil and declares
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MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 93
that when it came to throwing the funeral pall over her,
she, Madame, shed such bitter tears that she could see
no more.
Although the soul of virtue herself, Madame had not the
least objection to associating with women of the other
kind. She writes late in life to her pious half-sister:
"The way to associate with those who are so amusing
but of light conduct is to believe nothing and only listen
to their conversation. You need not fear catching their
bad ways, especially at your age. That is the way I
manage it, dear Louisa. I put up with all sorts of people.
And it is certain, too, that much more evil is said of people
than is really true."
Madame de Montespan was very different from Madame
de la Valliere. Of her Madame writes: "She was the
wickedest woman in the world. I know of three persons
whom she poisoned: Fontanges, Fontanges' little son,
and her maid, besides those I do not know about."
And again, "She was a living devil in every way." With
regard to this accusation against Madame de Montespan,
it must be said that Madame was too prone to suspect
poisonings. She believed that her predecessor, Henrietta
of England, had been carried off in that way, although
she attributed the crime not to Monsieur, but to his
vile favorites, the Marquis d'Effiat and the Chevalier
de Lorraine, the latter of whom had been exiled at the
first Madame's instigation. On the other hand, the reve-
94 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
lations of De la Reynie, chief of police, whose papers are
still preserved, compromise Madame de Montespan in
the most astounding manner and convict her of deal-
ings with noted sorcerers and poisoners whom she called
in to give her love potions to enable her to retain the
love of the King. In the company of these people she
went through the obscene rites of the messe noire, and not
only La Reynie, but reputable modern historians, who
have found corroborative evidence, believe that she finally
tried to poison the King.
In the time of the Montespan's glory the King's infat-
uation knew no bounds. For her he gave the most
sumptuous fetes, he showered gold upon her, and he
presented her with a domain at Clagny, where she erected
a superb palace, reminding Madame de Sevigne of Dido
building Carthage or of Armide in the midst of her en-
chantments. She bore the King seven children, who were
legitimatized and given rank next to the princes, but
who were always Madame's abominations. Louis' poor
Queen would appeal to Madame de Montespan for favors,
would humbly present herself at Clagny to ask after the
health of the children, and would take the mother driving
when she seemed in need of distraction. Madame de
Montespan had a husband living who objected very much
to what Moliere called the partage avec Jupiter.
Madame de Maintenon, the governess of Madame de
Montespan's children and her eventual supplanter in the
Madame de Montespan
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 95
King's favor, was another aversion of Madame's. The
latter's hatred was implacable, was horrible. It has been
ascribed to pure jealousy, but that explanation is only
partial. The two women were antipodes in every phase
of their characters : the one cold, calculating, and in-
triguing and bigoted to the last degree ; the other impul-
sive, warm-hearted, outspoken, and thoroughly tolerant in
religious matters. Madame had enormous pride of birth ;
she looked upon Madame de Maintenon as an upstart.
"How should the Rumpumpel have learned to live
with people of my kind?" she writes. "She has passed
her life with people of another kind." And again: "The
passion the husband has for this woman [Louis had
married her secretly in 1684] is something unheard of.
All Paris says that as soon as peace is concluded [this was
in 169G] the marriage will be declared and the lady take
her rank. That, too, makes me glad no longer to be first
lady, for at least I will follow something respectable,
and not be obliged to hand the lady her chemise and
gloves." The marriage, of course, was a mesalliance, and
mesalliances were Madame's betes noires. "If one marries
canaille," she once wrote, "one has to associate with one's
brother-in-law, and unconsciously assumes his base senti-
ments."
Madame's chief grievance was the religious influence
— which no one disputes — that Madame de Maintenon
exercised over the King. "Your Grace cannot possibly
96 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
imagine/' she writes, "what a simple belief the great man
has, just like children's nurses. It makes one feel badly
to hear him speak of it. . . . Before the great man gave
himself over to the ' devout ' he never in his life hated his
neighbor as he does now." Again she writes : " She makes
the King cruel, which his Majesty is not by nature; . . .
she makes him hard and tyrannical with no more com-
passion for anything. . . . The old hag and the Jesuits
had persuaded him that if he tormented the Protestants,
he would atone before God and man for the scandal he
had caused through the double adultery with the Montes-
pan." To her dying day Madame believed that the ter-
rible misfortunes which fell upon France were due to the
persecutions that culminated in the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. In the awful year of 1709 she writes:
"All honest people saw very well what would come of
expelling the Protestants, but too much belief was put
in priests and old women. That is why, at this present
moment, everything here is so happy and prosperous!"
There was no evil of which Madame did not think
Madame de Maintenon capable. "There is a rumor
that the Pantocrate is betraying her husband," she writes
in 1701, "and that she takes money from the Emperor;
that would be too good for anything if it were true . . .
she takes money from all sides here." Again: "They
say, and I believe, that every evening Madame de Mainte-
non receives five or six packets from the court spies
Madamk. de Maintenon
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 97
in which they give an account of all that goes on at court."
Once we have this malicious hit: "To show your Grace
that I was right in thinking that Jupiter would be having
Alcmenes if they let him, and did not frighten him with
Pluto, I must tell you that there was a very pretty woman
here, a cousin of the Marechale de la Motte, named Madame
de la Bossiere. She stayed several days and then returned
to Paris. Then our Jupiter asked, 'Where is Madame de
la Bossiere?' They answered, 'She has gone back to
Paris.' He responded, ' I am very glad of it, for when
I see her I cannot help fixing my eyes on her the whole
time.' So you see I was right."
Madame's language about Madame de Maintenon could,
for the most part, not be reproduced in polite society.
Here, however, are some mild specimens: "She cannot
do more harm than she has already done ; and I hope she
will go to hell for it, and may God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Ghost conduct her there ! . . .
I do not believe that a wickeder devil can be found in the
world than she is, with all her devoutness and hypocrisy.
I find that she illustrates the old German proverb, 'Where
the devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman.'
In 1690 Madame writes: "Though they try to vex me
in every way, and the villainy and wicked offices of old
witches cause me to be very badly treated by the King,
I have quickly taken my determination, and in order to
drive them wild, I take great care of my health. The old
98 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
woman is at least fifteen or twenty years older than I,
therefore I imagine that if I have patience and look after
my health, I shall enjoy the consolation of seeing her
go before me into the other world." Again in 1692:
"Though I am no longer young the old is older than I,
so I hope for the pleasure, before my end, of seeing the
old devil go to pieces." In 1695 she writes that Monsieur
has brought her news which is almost too good to be true :
"It is, namely, that the old is said to have a cancer."
She imagines Madame de Maintenon is merely pretending,
however, so as to hold her husband the faster.
In 1700 we have this : "I had to laugh heartily at your
Grace's remark that the King was not prevented by his
old shadow from being in a good humor. The influence
of this shadow is indeed great, and since the King has the
sun for his emblem, one may well call the old woman an
eclipse, for she darkens this sun here more than the real
one was darkened last year. The spots of the real eclipse
disappear in a few hours, but these spots will last as long
as the old woman lives." In 1710 she writes: "The
King is more charmed than ever with his old lady-love
. . . everything goes like the old lady's figure, namely,
crooked and criss-cross."
One who shared in the hatred of Madame de Maintenon
was the Dauphiness, a Bavarian princess who was a rela-
tive of Madame's. The wedding had taken place in 1680,
much to the chagrin of Madame's Aunt Sophia, whose
The Dauphin
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 99
chief object in coming to France in 1679 had been to show
her own daughter to the Dauphin. The Dauphiness was
not beautiful, but the King's special emissary to Bavaria
had reported that if his Majesty "would beware of his
first impressions, he would eventually be quite content."
Madame drove to Chalons for the wedding and had an
experience there that made her wonder later if marriages
that begin with laughter are always the happiest: "We
were all together on a raised estrade," she writes, "and
the Cardinal de Bouillon was about to perform the service
a few steps below us. The grande Mademoiselle's foot
slipped; I saw her coming and, being thin and light,
jumped down four steps at once and thus escaped the
shock. Instead the grande Mademoiselle fell on the car-
dinal, and the cardinal on the Dauphin and Dauphiness.
They too would have fallen had not the King stretched
out his arm and held them all. They fell just like cards."
The Dauphiness's life was an unhappy one, and she was
ill a great part of the time. She bore the Dauphin three
children, all of whom we shall meet again later : the Due
de Bourgogne, the Due d'Anjou, and the Due de Berry.
Madame writes in 1690: "The poor Dauphiness is
again very bad ; they are killing her through sadness.
They are trying their best to do the same for me, but I
am a harder nut than the Dauphiness, and before the old
women eat me up they are likely to lose a few teeth."
For the Dauphin Madame had no great affection : his
100 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
character seems to have been somewhat colorless. " Noth-
ing in the world can make him either glad or sad," Ma-
dame writes; ". . . he hates no one and loves nothing."
In some respects he seems never to have developed.
Madame writes: "I cannot bear to have any one touch
me from behind; it makes me beside myself with anger.
I very nearly hit the Dauphin one day, for he had a wicked
trick of stealing up and putting his clenched fist in the
chair just as I was about to sit down. I begged him
for God's sake to leave off this habit, and he did finally
leave me alone."
These grand personages of Versailles unbent strangely
at times. Once the King suggested to his daughters to
fire off little bombs in front of Monsieur's window and
rouse him from his slumbers. Instead they lighted a fire
and the smoke drove him from his room. Madame
writes: "It was four o'clock in the morning before he
could go back, and his agitated night gave him a horrible
headache and made him very angry. The King, when
he saw that his daughters had exceeded his commands
and his intentions, begged Monsieur's pardon for himself
and for the princesses. The one who really suffered most
by it was Madame du Maine, for Monsieur, as he passed
through her room, poured a glass of water into her bed,
so that she had first to dry her sheets and was unable
finally to get to bed any earlier than Monsieur himself.
Monsieur spoke very nicely about it afterwards, and said
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 101
he would like to be of an age when pages' jokes amused
him, but that such, unfortunately, was not the case."
Saint-Simon sums up the character of the Dauphin in
much the same terms as Madame: "A hunter without
pleasure ; inclined to be voluptuous but without taste ; once
a player for high stakes, but, — since he took to building, —
whistling, and tapping his snuff-box with his fingers in
the corner of the salon at Marly; opening his large eyes
on this person and that, almost without looking at them ;
without conversation, without amusement, I might almost
say without feeling or thinking." He speaks of him as an
" indefinable prince."
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All had gone moderately well with Madame for the
first ten years of her stay in France. She had borne her
husband three children, the Due de Valois, the Due de
Chartres (the future Regent), and the young Elizabeth
Charlotte. The Due de Valois died at the age of three,
and forty years later Madame writes : "I wept for my son
for six whole months. I thought I should go mad. No
one knows that pain who has not lost a child. It is
as though some one were tearing the very heart out of
one's body. I shudder at it still." But after ten years
there came terrible times with Monsieur. He really
was the scum of the earth, a man of horrible vices who
squandered his own and Madame's money on the vilest
102 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
favorites — among them the very men who were believed
to have poisoned his first wife. "If it was only that
Monsieur lost his money in gambling/' Madame writes,
"it would not be so bad; but that he gives it away by
the hundreds of thousands of francs and then tries to
economize it on his children and me is not pleasant at
all." And again, — this after Monsieur's death, — "They
find that three young fellows alone received a hundred
thousand thalers a year each." "There is no use expos-
tulating with him," she once wrote; "he says openly
that he is growing old and has no time to lose. By hook
or by crook he means to be merry to the end. Those who
outlive him, he says, must shift for themselves, that he
loves himself more than wife or children."
Madame nearly fell a victim to an odious intrigue
woven against her by her husband's favorites, who saw
in her a bar to his liberalities. They made her husband
believe, and tried to convince the King, that she had a
liaison with one of the courtiers. There were a number
of persons in the plot, and it ended in Monsieur talking of
divorce and dismissing her favorite attendants, and in
Madame going and begging the King to permit her to end
her days in a convent. One remark she was said to have
made — that they were trying to poison her as they had
poisoned the late Madame — added oil to the flames ;
but with the King's help her enemies were finally brought
to their knees.
Heidelberg Castle in RriNS
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 103
But Madame's life, from now on, became almost unbear-
able, because the King, too, began to turn against her —
largely, she believed, through the influence of Madame de
Maintenon. "The King is so changed in everything that I
no longer know him," she writes in 1685, "though I know
perfectly well whence it all comes. But there is nothing
to be done." Louis finally struck Madame a most terrible
blow by his treatment of her adored country, the Palati-
nate. Under pretext of claiming it as her inheritance
after her brother's death he laid it waste with fire and
sword. Madame writes in September, 1688: "Our
Dauphin has now become a warrior and left yesterday for
the army in order to besiege and take Philipsburg. He
told me that after Philipsburg he wished to take
Mannheim and Frankenthal and carry on the war
in my interests. But I answered him, 'If you take my
advice, you will not go, for I confess I can only have sor-
row and no joy at seeing my name made use of to ruin
my poor country,' and thus we bade each other farewell."
By the orders of Louvois, Louis' minister, Heidelberg
castle, where Madame had passed the happiest days of
her life, was deliberately blown up with gunpowder;
nothing remained intact in it but the great wine-cask,
even then so famous that to drink from it the Dauphin
made a special expedition.
"What pains me most," Madame writes, "is that they
used my name to plunge the poor people into the most utter
104 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
despair. Though they kill me for it, I cannot help bewail-
ing that I am, so to speak, the ruin of my fatherland." And
she tells in wonderfully graphic language how she cannot
shut out the dreadful vision of her ancestral castle in ruins,
how it brings back the memory of what it was in her time
and what it is now, — yes, and what she herself has become
and how she has failed in the very object for which she
allowed herself to be sold, as it were, to France. "When
all the misfortunes came about," she wrote later, "I was
for more than six months in such a state that the moment
I closed my eyes to try to sleep I saw the places in flames,
I sprang up with horror and wept until I choked." At
Versailles they seem to have been impatient of her grief
and to have practically forced her to play her part as
before in the ceremonies and fetes.
She writes in 1689 : " Yesterday they told me something
that touched me very much, and I could not listen to it
without tears, namely, that the poor people in Mannheim
had all gone back and sought refuge in their cellars, and
that they live there as if they were in houses — yes, that
they even hold the market daily, as though the town were
in its former condition ; and that if a Frenchman comes
to Heidelberg the poor people crowd round him and ask
after me."
She had once written: "It seems to me we Palatines
have this about us, that we love our country unto death
and nothing goes ahead of it. In that respect we are
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 105
like the Israelites." Yet she never wishes to go back:
"I wish Heidelberg happiness, blessings, and all that is
good," she writes in 1714; "but it would kill me to see it
again now." And again, near the end of her life: "I
have a horror of nothing so much as of a ruined castle
... all my life I have had a horror of them. ... I
shudder when I think of all that Monsieur de Louvois
burned. I imagine he is burning finely for it in the other
world. . . . He was horribly cruel, had no pity for any-
thing."
**■-" -■' *Jf* ''■ *J**
^y* ^i^ ^^ ^^ ^^
A new element came into Madame's life, and indeed into
that of the whole court with the advent of the fugitive
King James, of his wife, Mary of Modena, and of their little
son. William of Orange landed in England on November
5, 1688, and on February 13, 1689, the crown was granted
to him by act of Parliament, James and his wife having
meanwhile been allowed to escape. Louis XIV was
attending mass when a chamberlain stepped up and
whispered something in his ear. He cried aloud, "The
King of England has arrived in France ; he is at Bou-
logne!" This news was so different to that which had
been expected, namely, that King James had been killed
in battle, that an immense joy seized on all. Madame's
letters for this period are unfortunately lost, but Madame
de Sdvigne" gives interesting details of the arrival. It
106 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
must be remembered that the Queen and her son preceded
the King by a day. Madame de Sevigne writes on Janu-
ary 10: "Our King acts in a manner almost divine with
regard to their Britannic majesties ; for is it not being the
representative of the Almighty, to support a King ban-
ished, betrayed, and abandoned? The noble ambition
of our sovereign is gratified by acting this part ; he went
to meet the Queen with all his household and a hundred
coaches and six. When he perceived the Prince of Wales'
carriage, he alighted and would not let this little child, who
is beautiful as an angel, they say, dismount. He affec-
tionately embraced him. He then ran to the Queen, who
was by this time alighted; he saluted her, talked with
her for some time, placed her at his right hand in his
carriage, presented to her the Dauphin and Monsieur,
who were also in the carriage, and conducted her to St.
Germain, where she found everything prepared for her
like a queen, all sorts of apparel and a rich casket con-
taining six thousand louis d'ors. The King of England
was expected the next day at St. Germain, where the King
awaited him. He arrived late because he came from
Versailles. His Majesty went to the end of the guard-
room to meet him ; the King of England made an inclina-
tion, as if to embrace his knees, but the King prevented
him and embraced him three or four times very cordially.
They talked together in a low voice for nearly a quarter
of an hour. The King presented to him the Dauphin
Kino James II
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 107
and Monsieur, the princes of the blood and the Cardinal de
Bonzi. He conducted him to the apartment of the Queen,
who could scarcely refrain from tears. After conversing
for a few minutes his Majesty led them to the apartment
of the Prince of Wales, where they again conversed for
some time, and he then withdrew, not choosing to be
attended back, but saying to the King : ' This is your
house ; when I come, you will do the honours of it, and I
will do the honours of mine when you come to Versailles.'
The next day, which was yesterday, the Dauphiness
went there with all the court. I do not know how they
will have managed about chairs for the princesses. They
had them at the wedding of the Queen of Spain, and the
Queen-mother of England was treated as a fille de France.
. . . His Majesty sent the King of England ten thousand
louis d'ors. The latter looks old and worn. The Queen
is thin, with fine black eyes swollen from weeping; a
fine complexion but rather pale ; a large mouth, beautiful
teeth, a fine figure and a good share of sense. No wonder
that with all these advantages she pleases every one."
Two days later Madame de Sevigne writes again: "It
is so extraordinary to have this court here that it is the
constant subject of conversation. The regulation of rank
and precedence is to be attended to, so as to make life
pleasant for those who are so little likely to be restored.
The King said this the other day, adding that the English
King was the best man in the world, that he should hunt
108 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
with him, that he should come to Marly and Trianon,
and that the courtiers should accustom themselves to
him."
It is interesting to see to what questions of etiquette
this appearance of a new King at court, and a King
whose susceptibilities it was desired to spare in every
way, gave rise. "The King of England does not give
his hand to the Dauphin," writes Madame de Sevigne,
"and does not reconduct him." And again: "The
Queen has not kissed Monsieur, who is offended at this.
She said to the King : ' Tell me what you wish me to
do; if you would have me follow the French fashion, I
will kiss whom you please; but it is not the custom in
England to kiss any one."
The excitement ran all through the royal family, each
trying to adjust himself to the new situation. "The
Dauphiness does not intend to visit this Queen," writes
Madame de Sevigne; "she wants her right-hand seat
and chair of state, which cannot be; she will, therefore,
always be in bed when the Queen visits her." The
princesses of the blood objected to taking seats without
a back in the Queen's presence, but this was arranged by
having the princesses make their visits simultaneously
with Madame. "Madame is to have an arm-chair upon
the left hand," writes Madame de Sevigne, "and the
princesses of the blood are to visit with her; before her
they have tabourets only. The duchesses will be on the
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 109
same footing as when in the Dauphiness's presence;
this is settled. The King, having learned that a King
of France gave a Prince of Wales merely a chair on the
left hand, chooses that the King of England should treat
the Dauphin in the same manner and take precedence
over him. He is to receive Monsieur without chair or
ceremony. The Queen has kissed him after saying
what I told you to our sovereign."
On January 17 we have this from Madame de
Sevigne: "The English court is quite established at St.
Germain. They would not accept more than 15,000
livres a month, and have regulated their court upon
that basis. The Queen is very much liked ; our King
converses very pleasantly with her; she has good sense
without affectation. The King wished the Dauphiness
to pay her the first visit, but the Dauphiness was always
so conveniently indisposed that this Queen paid her a
visit three days ago, admirably dressed; a black velvet
robe, a beautiful petticoat, her hair tastefully disposed,
a figure like the Princess de Conti's, and great dignity of
manner. The King received her as she alighted; she
went first into his apartment where she had a chair
lower than the King's. Here she remained for half an
hour; he then conducted her to the Dauphiness, who
was up and about. This occasioned a little surprise.
The Queen said to her, 'I expected, Madame, to have
found you in bed/ 'I wished to rise, Madame/ replied
110 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
the Dauphiness, Ho receive the honor your Majesty
does me.' The King then left them, as the Dauphiness
has no chair in his presence. The Queen took her seat
with the Dauphiness on her right hand and Madame
on her left, and there were three other chairs for the
young princes. They conversed together for upwards of
half an hour. Several duchesses were present, and the
court was very numerous. At length she retired; the
King had given orders to be informed of it, and handed
her back to her carriage. I do not know how far the
Dauphiness went with her, but I shall hear. The King,
on his return, highly praised the Queen, saying: 'This
is how a queen ought to be, both in person and mind,
holding her court with dignity. . . .' Some of our
ladies, who tried to assume the airs of princesses, did
not kiss the Queen's robe; some of the duchesses tried
to avoid it too. But the King was displeased at this,
and now they pay her homage."
Our Madame writes of the Queen in 1690; "To tell
the truth she is horribly proud and arrogant, which has
not helped her in gaining the favor of the ladies here.
She was long unwilling to make courtesies to any one;
now she makes little bobs which do not yet suit our
ladies."
Later, indeed, Madame became quite devoted to the
Queen, and, writing long afterwards, describes her as fol-
lows: "The Queen was not pretty, but very agreeable.
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MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 111
She was exceptionally tall — as tall as our late King — and
very thin, though more so in the body than in the face.
The face was rather long, but rather round, too. She
had intelligence in her eyes, which were not ugly, either.
She had a straight nose and quite a large mouth, with
large white teeth which remained white to the end.
Her face was a little sallow, more noticeably so after her
Majesty had left off rouging. She had a good bearing
and walked well, being very proper in everything."
Madame's feelings towards King James, too, varied
at different times. The first verdict that we have is:
"When one sees the good King and speaks to him, one
feels, indeed, very sorry for him ; he seems to be good-
ness itself. But one cannot be surprised that what we
now witness should have happened to him. ... If
one wishes to distinguish the two Kings, one can say
that the Prince of Orange is 'King in England,' while
ours is 'King out of England.'" Later she tells ridicu-
lous anecdotes about James and concludes: "I am sorry
for him, yet I cannot help laughing when I see him so
silly. He is glad to be here and is always laughing."
In February, 1689, James set out to regain his king-
dom, and Louis XIV, who had given him a whole army
with its accoutrements and millions of money, said to
him at parting: "Sir, it is with grief I see you depart,
yet I never wish to see you again. But should you
return, be assured you will find me the same as you
112 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
leave me." After the failure of the expedition and
James 7 return, Madame considers him callous, far too
easily amused with trifles and too much absorbed in
bishops and monks. She thinks, too, that if he were
not so entirely under the eye of the Queen, he might
behave less respectably. "I imagine this good Queen
would be happy to have her lord never see any ladies
handsomer than myself," she writes.
Soon after, in October, 1690, we have this: "Madame
de Portsmouth, whom we had here a few days ago,
told me the late King [Charles] used to say: 'You
will see that when my brother is King, he will lose his
kingdom through zeal for religion and his soul through
ugly women, for he has not good taste enough to love
pretty ones. . . .' If his going to Rome would give us a
good peace, I wish he would soon betake himself there,
for I am very tired of war. The more one sees this King
and the more one hears of the Prince of Orange, the
more one excuses the Prince and sees that he is worthy
of esteem. . . . Certainly an intelligence like his pleases
me better than a handsome face."
Madame sends comic songs to her aunt on the subject
of King James, and is glad they have diverted her Grace.
The songs, she declares, do not hurt him in France, and
he is more in favor than one would imagine. "They
make songs here about everything, and no one can escape
them — not even our King himself, or his minister . . .
MADAME'S ASSOCIATES 113
every one says his opinion of them all either in prose or
in verse. So the King of England must not take it ill."
As she grows to know King James better, she changes
her opinion of him: "Now that I have come to know
good King James better, I have grown quite fond of
him. He is the best man in the world. I pity him from
the bottom of my heart, for he sighs sometimes so un-
happily. He took me aside and questioned me closely
as to whether it was true that his daughter, the Prin-
cess of Orange, had been so sad over his misfortunes that
she had not wished to dance when her Grace the Elec-
tress of Brandenburg was in The Hague, and whether
it was true that she had written to your Grace that she
was glad he had not been killed in Ireland. I assured
him it was true, and it seemed to me that this assurance
gave the poor unhappy King a little consolation."
What she criticises most in King James is his devout-
ness. She would like to see him back upon his throne,
but declares that the pai pai, the mat mai (so she mimics
the intoning of the priests), and all the monkishness is
more his affair than reigning: "I wish he could come
to a good arrangement with the Prince of Orange, so
that he could do the praying for the prince, and the
latter do the reigning for his father-in-law; then there
might be peace all round."
After the failure of the expedition of 1692, Madame
pities King James still more. The latter's letter to
114
A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Louis declaring that he could not endure the thought
of having brought disgrace on the King's arms and
begging him to abandon him, brought tears to her eyes.
But she thinks that James is the simplest man she ever
saw, and that a child of seven would not have made
such mistakes. She wishes he would become a pilgrim,
go to Rome, and see as many Jesuits and monks as possi-
ble, leaving William in possession, and she thinks it
would be a fine combination if William, who is childless,
would adopt James' children.
The Entrance to the Labyrinth
CHAPTER V
The King's Grandsons and the Stuarts
The Dauphiness died in 1690, and Madame writes
that she has wept herself almost blind, "for I loved her
Grace very much; moreover, when I saw our arms
everywhere on the coffin and on the black hangings in
the church, it so recalled to me the deaths of his Grace
the Elector, of my mother, and of my brother that I
nearly burst with weeping."
She is aghast at the callousness of the rest of the court,
and she places Louis before us in a new light : " Wednes-
day, after this dreadful ceremony, we went to Marly;
there my sadness might have left me, for life went on
exactly as usual; all the rooms full of card players, in
the afternoon the hunting, in the evening the music
. . . would God your Grace could be as hard-hearted
and love your own as little as the great man his son
115
116 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
and his brother. For they grieve over nothing, die who
will. ... If they did it from strength of character, one
might praise and admire them ; but such is not the case.
With the spectacle before their eyes they are full of
lamentations; but the moment they are out of the
room they laugh and never think of it again." Years
later Saint-Simon tells us in this connection that on
the day after Monsieur's death the King sang prologues
of operas and asked the Duchesse de Bourgogne what
could make her so melancholy; while the Due de Bour-
gogne asked the Due de Montfort to play at "Brelan."
"'BrelanP you can't be thinking of it," cried Montfort;
"Monsieur is still warm!"
Madame had one trial at this time which she often
designated as the bitterest in her life. Already in 1688
she had written to her aunt these lines: "I could not
neglect this good and safe opportunity of pouring
out my whole heart to your Grace and telling you
all my torments, which I cannot confide to the ordi-
nary post. I must, then, confess to my dearest aunt
that for some time I have been far, far from happy,
though I let it be noticed just as little as possible. The
real reason has been confided to me why the King treats
the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d'Effiat so
well. It is because they have promised to persuade
Monsieur to humbly beg the King to marry the Montes-
pan's children to mine — namely, my daughter to the
opmjMujnrojjgiimiyiiijruuimmnntJOtfimunywri™
A Fountain (The Moukey and the Chestnuts)
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 117
lame Due du Maine, and my son to Mademoiselle de
Blois. In this case the Maintenon is entirely for the
Montespan, because it was she who brought these bas-
tards up, and she loves the lame boy like her own child.
Now think, your Grace, what my feelings must be at
seeing my daughter alone so badly provided for, although
her sisters are so well married. Even were not the Due
du Maine the child of a double adultery, but a rightful
prince, I should not want him for a son-in-law nor his
sister for a daughter-in-law. He is horribly ugly and
lame, and has other bad qualities of his own, is stingy
as the devil, and has not a good disposition. His sister,
indeed, has a good disposition, but is dreadfully delicate,
and so blear-eyed that I believe she will finally go blind.
But over and above all this they are, as I said before,
bastards from a double adultery and children of the
wickedest and most desperate woman on the face of the
earth. Now I leave it to your Grace to imagine how
pleasing this is to me. The worst thing is that I cannot
speak out plainly to Monsieur about the matter, for he
has the pretty habit, when I speak a word to him, of
immediately repeating it, with amplifications, to the
King and getting me into a hundred difficulties with
the latter. I am therefore in dire need, and do not
know where to turn to avoid this calamity. Meanwhile
I cannot help torturing myself inwardly, and every
time I see these bastards my blood wells up. My dearly
118 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
loved aunt may well imagine how it must pain me to
see my only son and my only daughter the victims of
my worst enemies, who daily inflict and have inflicted on
me every kind of evil — yes, even trying to smirch my
honor through their false speeches. They say that
D'Effiat has the promise of a dukedom, and that the
Chevalier is to have a large sum of money. ... I
shall probably be exiled on account of this, for if Mon-
sieur speaks to me seriously about it, I shall not fail to
tell him what I think. He will, then, as usual, retail it
to the King."
What Madame had so dreaded came to pass, at least
in part, in 1692. Monsieur came to her one day, told
her that a marriage had been arranged between their
son and Mademoiselle de Blois, and hoped that she,
Madame, would "not be so base" as to oppose it. It
was the wish of the boy himself, and the King was ready
to make brilliant provision for the pair.
Madame was frantic. But she did not dare to openly
oppose such a powerful combination, and in a conference
held in the King's cabinet told him and Monsieur that
when they spoke to her en maitre she felt bound to obey.
Saint-Simon relates that after this interview, he saw
Madame raging like a lioness ; that she stalked along the
Galerie des glaces handkerchief in hand, weeping and
gesticulating wildly and looking for all the world like
Ceres demanding Proserpine back from Jupiter. He
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THE KING'S GRANDSONS 119
further relates that as her son bent to kiss her hand
she drew it back and gave him a resounding whack on
the ear; also that when, after supper that night, she
and the King exchanged the customary bows, hers was
a mere pirouette and that the King as he raised his head
found himself staring at her retreating back.
Madame begged her aunt not to believe the stories of
her acting childishly in regard to the marriage. But
she made no secret of her horror of this match. When
she learns that the Due du Maine has taken a Bourbon
princess, she writes that a stone has fallen from her
heart. But in 1695, she writes: "Should all the present
caresses be for the purpose of handing over my daughter
to Stinknase [the Comte de Toulouse], I will never in
my life do it." And nearly a whole year later she ex-
presses the fear that Stinknase still has "our girl" in
view.
One cannot wonder that Madame was unpopular with
the people of the court, for her bluntness and outspoken-
ness were something phenomenal, as one may judge
from a little episode that occurred in January, 1696.
Madame at the time was forty-four years old. A Cheva-
lier de Bouillon had been boasting that she was in love
with him. "Last Monday when I came to the play,"
she writes, "I saw some young people look at me, laugh
scornfully, and make signs to the Chevalier. That roused
my blood. We had been talking of apostrophizing.
120 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
'There's one man I mean to apostrophize soon/ I said
out loud before the Dauphin. 'Who?' he asked.
'Chevalier de Bouillon/ I replied; 'I hear he boasts of
my having an intense passion for him about which I
myself know nothing. I should like to know by what
great and beautiful qualities he has so charmed me;
and if he continues to talk as if he were so fascinating,
I shall have to beg the King to remove this torch that
burns my heart to ashes.' " She said it laughingly, so
she tells us, but the Dauphin took the matter up and
the Chevalier's father came to see her. She writes :
'"What/ said Monsieur de Bouillon, 'could make you
think my son capable of such impertinence?' 'There
are two reasons/ I answered, 'one is his insolence to
the Duchess of Hanover . . . the other that he is a
drunkard. I saw him so drunk at Fontainebleau that
in my presence, at the hunt, he called you an old fool.'
. . . There are terrible disputes at court over this
matter. More than half think I did perfectly right to
give the young people a scare; others think I might
have done it in a quieter way, and less publicly."
In this same year, 1696, Madame lost her position as
first lady in France, for the Due de Bourgogne, the King's
eldest grandson, contracted to marry a Savoy princess.
The little bride came to France as a hostage, but with
the contract of marriage already drawn up. She was
the step-granddaughter of Madame. To make sure
The Duchesse dk Bourgognb
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 121
that she was no smaller and no less beautiful than had
been represented, her portrait, together with a ribbon
indicating her height and one of her corsages to indi-
cate her girth, had been sent ahead and approved. A
crowd of some twenty thousand gathered at the frontier,
near the Pont de Beauvoisin, to greet her, the King
having sent a cortege of no less than six hundred per-
sons. The exigencies of etiquette marred the joy of her
arrival. Her escort insisted that the French should come
to the Savoy end of the bridge and get her, the French that
the Savoyards should bring her over. After many hours
of delay and irritation the plan was adopted of placing
a coach in the middle of the bridge, with the hind wheels
in Savoy, the front in France. The two escorts drew
up each on its own side of the dividing line. The trans-
fer was then effected, and a written receipt given for the
little princess, as though she had been a bale of mer-
chandise.
We have several portraits of the Duchesse de Bour-
gogne, and Madame's verbal description is as vivid as
any portrait. "I must tell your Grace," she writes,
"a little about the future Duchesse de Bourgogne, who
finally arrived at Fontainebleau last Monday. The King,
Monsieur, and my son received her on Monday at Mon-
targis. I awaited her in her apartment at Fontainebleau.
I received her laughing, for I thought I should laugh
myself ill. There was such a crowd and crush that
122 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
they pushed poor Madame de Nemours and the Mare-
chale de la Motte so that both came towards us back-
wards the whole length of the room, and finally fell on
Madame de Maintenon. Had I not held the latter by
the arm, they would have knocked each other down
like cards; it was too comical. . . . As to the princess,"
Madame continues, "her Grace is not very tall for her
age, but has a nice slim figure like a perfect doll. She
has fine blonde hair and in great quantities, black eyes
and eyebrows and very long and beautiful eyelashes;
her skin is very smooth, but not so very white; the
little nose neither pretty nor ugly; a large mouth and
thick lips — in short, quite an Austrian mouth and chin.
She walks well, has a good bearing, and is graceful in
everything she does. She is very serious for a child of
her age [she is eleven], and frightfully politic. She
pays little attention to her grandfather and hardly
looks at my son or me; but the moment she sees Ma-
dame de Maintenon she smiles at her and goes to her
with open arms. . . . We are all children once more.
Day before yesterday ... we played blind-man's-buff;
yesterday we played 'how do you like the company?'
It did me good to tear round a little."
We have a letter that the King wrote to Madame de
Maintenon on his way back with the little princess from
Montargis. He describes her much as Madame has
done and concludes: "To talk frankly to you, as I al-
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 123
A
ways do, I find her just as one would wish, and I should
be sorry to have her any older. So far I have done
wonderfully well. I hope to keep up a certain easy air
that I have assumed, until we reach Fontainebleau,
where I am longing to be once more."
Madame de Maintenon, for her part, corroborates
what Madame has written about the attentions shown
her by the Duchesse de Bourgogne, who had been care-
fully taught the way to the King's heart: "The princess
is so polite that it prevents her from saying the least
thing that is disagreeable. I tried to resist the caresses
she bestowed upon me by telling her I was too old.
'Ah, not so old!' she said to me. She came and kissed
me after the King had left her room, made me sit down
and, seating herself with a flattering air on my knees,
she said : ' Mamma told me to express her great friend-
ship for you, and to ask for yours for me. I beg of you
to teach me how to please the King.' Such were her
words, but I cannot express the sweetness, gayety and
grace that accompanied them." Madame de Maintenon
assumed practically the whole care of the Duchesse de
Bourgogne, and Madame never approved the principle
on which she was educated, which was, apparently, that
she might do whatever she pleased. Madame declares
that she would hear the very valets say, "Come, let
us play with the Duchesse de Bourgogne !" and would see
them seize the child's feet and drag her along the ground.
124 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
The wedding took place when the Princess was
twelve, and the ceremonies are described in detail by
the Mercure de France, the society journal of the day:
"They formed in line of march for the chapel. The
Due de Bourgogne and the Princess of Savoy marched
in front of his Majesty; the princes and princesses
marched according to their rank. Never was magnifi-
cence in dress pushed so far. The King's costume was
of cloth of gold trimmed along the borders with a thick
and rich embroidery of gold. Monseigneur (the Dauphin)
was clad in gold brocade with gold embroidery on the
borders. The dress of his Grace the Due de Bourgogne
was of black velvet with a cloak; it was embroidered
all over with gold, and the cloak was lined with a fabric
of silver likewise embroidered with gold, but in a deli-
cate pattern. He was in doublet, with open-work
breeches and great garters covered with lace such as
were formerly worn. There were bows and ribbons
on his shoes and a bunch of plumes in his hat. The
dress of the Princess of Savoy was of cloth of silver em-
broidered with silver and trimmed with rubies and
pearls. . . . Monsieur's dress was superb. It was of
black velvet with thick buttonholes of gold embroidery
in constant succession, and great diamond buttons.
His waistcoat was of gold, and everything that went
with his dress was of the same richness. . . . Madame,
the Duchesse de Chartres, and Madame la duchesse had
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THE KING'S GRANDSONS 125
dresses of about the same quality, namely, of the finest
gold material with gold trimmings, the heaviest and
richest that could be made. Their head-dresses and
bodices were adorned with every kind of precious stone."
We learn from Dangeau that the bride wore all the
crown jewels, worth nearly twelve million francs, and
that some one had to stand by her to prevent her from
falling over with the weight. Madame writes of her-
self: "I had on a skirt and underskirt so abominably
heavy that I could scarcely stand. It was all of curled
gold, with black chenille to form the flowers, and the
ornaments were pearls and diamonds. . . . My daughter
had on a green velvet dress with upper and underskirt
embroidered with gold, and the whole waist bordered
with rubies and diamonds. The embroidery was care-
fully made so that each rose seemed inserted. On the
head were the full insignia and poingons of rubies and
gold ribbon and covered with diamonds."
"A great number of lords and ladies," continues the
Mercure, "had dresses in no way inferior to those I
have described to you. Those ladies who were no longer
in their first youth were clad in black velvet, with very
fine skirts either embroidered or braided with gold, and
were adorned with rich diamond crosses. In all this
brilliancy the court passed along the galerie [des glaces],
through the apartments, down the staircase, and into
the chapel." After the service came the breakfast in
126 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
the apartment of the Duchesse de Bourgogne. Then
came more festivities, fireworks, an illumination, and
supper. "We went straight to table," writes Madame,
"which was in the shape of a horseshoe. No one ate
with us except those of the royal house and all the bas-
tards. Madame de Verneuil ate with us too, because
she was the widow of Henry IV's bastard. The time
did not seem long to me, for I sat next to my dear Due
de Berry, who kept me laughing. He said: 'I see my
brother making eyes at his little wife, but if I wanted
I could make eyes very well, too. I've known for a
long time how to make eyes; you only need to look
steadily, and sideways;' and he imitated his brother
right comically."
"On leaving the table," writes Saint-Simon, "they
went to put the bride to bed, and the King made abso-
lutely all the men go out of her room. All the ladies
stayed, and the Queen of England gave her the chemise
which was handed by the Duchesse du Lude. The Due
de Bourgogne undressed in the antechamber in the
midst of the whole court and seated on a folding stool.
The King was there with all the princes. The King of
England gave him the shirt, which was handed by the
Due de Beauvillier. As soon as the Duchesse de Bour-
gogne was in bed, the Due de Bourgogne entered and
placed himself in the bed at her right side in the presence
of the Kings and of the whole court, and soon after-
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 127
wards the King and Queen of England left. The King
went to bed, and every one left the nuptial chamber
except Monseigneur, the princess's ladies, and the Due
de Beauvillier who remained the whole time at the
bolster of the bed on the side of his pupil, and the Duch-
esse du Lude on the other. Monseigneur remained talk-
ing with them for a quarter of an hour, but for which
they would have felt rather awkward. Then he made
his son rise, but first made him kiss the Princess in spite
of the opposition of the Duchesse du Lude. It turned
out that she was not in the wrong: the King disap-
proved, and said he did not wish his grandson to kiss
the end of his wife's finger until they were entirely
together. He dressed again in the antechamber be-
cause it was cold, and went to bed in his own room as
usual. The little De Berry, full of fun and with his
own opinions, found the docility of his brother all wrong,
and assured them that he himself would have remained
in the bed."
The festivities continued for days. At the ball on
December 11 the costumes were almost finer than at
the wedding itself. The Mercure relates that the ma-
jority of the nobles, besides their gold-embroidered suits,
had "very rich shoulder-knots, bunches of plumes,
several etages high, sleeves loaded with gold and silver
lace and ribbons, gloves likewise garnished with lace,
silk stockings of various colors and embroidered with
128 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
gold, and ribbons on their shoes." The ladies were still
more superbly dressed; their skirts were " braided with
a richness one could not express."
But it would simply be tiresome to rehearse the dif-
ferent variations of gold and jewels on velvet or cloth
of gold. Nor can we delay to tell of the magnificent
collation that was wheeled in on tables adorned not
with table-cloths but with "moss and verdure." At
another ball three days later the Duchesse de Bourgogne
wore "a dress of black velvet entirely covered with dia-
monds. Her hair was matted with pearls, and all the
rest of her head-dress was so filled with diamonds that
one does not exaggerate in saying that she was almost
too dazzling to behold." Madame's own skirt was
"braided with rubies and diamonds," and her daugh-
ter's dress had "large diamonds and pearls on all the
seams." Her jupe entre-deux, whatever that may be,
was trimmed all over with Spanish point lace and silver.
One can well believe the assertion of the Mercure that
at these balls the "dresses alone were worth several
millions."
Madame has forebodings as to the future of the Duch-
esse de Bourgogne. "I do not know," she writes, " if the
Duchesse de Bourgogne will be more fortunate than the
Dauphiness, the Grand Duchess, and myself; for when
we first came we were all, each in turn, merveilleux.
But they soon tired of us." As time went on the little
"
Monsieur's Drkss at the Buurgugnk Wedding
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 129
Princess was to side more and more squarely with Ma-
dame's enemies and to treat her with great rudeness.
"Every day she does something rude to me," she once
writes; "at the King's table she has the dishes I wish
to eat snatched away from under my very nose. When
I go to see her, she looks at me over her shoulder and
says nothing, or she laughs at me with her ladies. The
old woman orders that expressly; she hopes I will get
angry and lose my temper."
The character of the Due de Bourgogne went through
several phases. Madame complains at first of his hor-
rible debauchery and of his pride and arrogance. But
then he becomes "so horribly devout that I think he is
getting quite idiotic and may turn into a quietist."
Even the King is alarmed and says to him sarcastically,
when summoning him to an important council, "Unless
you prefer to go to vespers." Madame thinks his wife's
flirtations ought to be mortification enough for him, and
tells how he "goes no longer to plays, will hear of no
opera, and turns the finest operatic melodies into hymns."
And she finds his prudishness even more unprincely
than his devoutness. She tells how a lady of the court
tried to kiss him by force: "For a long time he resisted;
and when his strength was at an end, he stuck a great
pin into her head so that she had to take to her room
and to her bed. Even Joseph was not so bad as that;
he merely left his coat and ran, but did not hit and stab.
130 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
That was more like a monk of La Trappe." Eventually
the Due de Bourgogne struck a happy medium between
his debauchery and his piety, and Madame came to ad-
mire him greatly.
In 1698 Madame's daughter, the young Elizabeth
Charlotte, was married to the Due de Lorraine, who was
technically known as a foreign prince or prince etranger.
"The foreign princes," writes Sainctot, in his ceremonial,
"are those descended from a sovereign family who have
settled in France and whom the King himself has recog-
nized as such; as, for instance, the princes of the house
of Lorraine, of Monaco, of Rohan, and of Bouillon, and
La Tremouille. They are called ' foreign princes' be-
cause they may not succeed to the throne." Madame
has no enthusiasm for this Lorraine match; and indeed
no one would have ventured to prophesy at that time
that the young Duchess's son would one day become
Holy Roman Emperor and that her granddaughter,
Marie Antoinette, would become Queen of France.
Madame writes of the wedding: "I do not know if
my daughter's marriage will end well, but it began very
sadly; for when they united them, every one in the
chapel wept, — the King, the King and Queen of Eng-
land, all the princesses, all the clergy, all the courtiers
down to the guards and Swiss, all the envoys, the people ;
in short, every one. Every one has wept bitter tears —
with the exception of the Dauphin who did not shed a
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 131
single tear and looked on the whole thing as a spectacle.
The Duchesse de Bourgogne has at last shown that she
has a good heart, for she was so sad that she could not
eat and did nothing but weep bitterly after saying good-
by to her aunt. . . .
"I think in Lorraine they will find my daughter not
badly equipped. She has 20,000 thalers' worth of linens
and laces, very fine and in great quantity — four large,
strong chests full."
Madame writes about this time that the "match is
not so delightful as to make one rejoice much, but not
unreasonable enough to make one sad . . . my only
consolation in this marriage is that we shall not have
Stinknase." It speaks well for Madame's control of her-
self that with her own daughter-in-law she never, so far
as is known, had a quarrel or scene of any kind. "One
lives outwardly on good terms here," she once writes
from Versailles, "but all are really like cats and dogs as
regards each other." Inwardly, at all events, Madame
seethes like a volcano ; she writes that she cannot stand
that crooked figure, that painted face, those pendent
cheeks, that pursed-up mouth, that air of indolence
"as though she would like larks ready roasted to drop
into her mouth. . . . Her pride and ill-humor are un-
bearable and her face is thoroughly unpleasant. She has a
horrible way of talking as though her mouth were full of
meal, and her head is always wagging. ... I have to see
132 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
this cursed creature every day before my eyes; it is a
hellish torture." Her favorite simile for her is mouse-
excrement that has contaminated the pepper. She writes
in 1696: "Our mouse-excrement has again drunk herself
full to the brim. I fear she will never in her life shake off
the habit." " Drinking is dreadfully common among
women of quality in this country," Madame writes
later in another connection, "five of them recently got
raving drunk, and when they no longer knew what they
were doing, they took the drunkest one, laid her on the
ground, and then kicked her all over until they had made
her a perfect bladder." According to her, her daughter-
in-law got drunk three times a week„ Even as long as
twenty years after the wedding Madame writes of poor
Madame d'Orleans: "With all her gravity she is never
without some affair ; though to tell the honest truth she
keeps herself well within bounds and will never cause an
eclat. All Paris considers her a Vestal ; but I who look
closer know well how it stands. She lives on good terms
with me, and I am careful not to cause her the least
vexation. I advise my son, too, to live on good terms
with her, for what good would an eclat be ? The King
would side with his daughter, and my son would have to
keep her, eclat and all. So it is better to take no notice
and live well together."
"One must confess the truth," she writes again; "my
boy defiled himself terribly with this creature."
Madame's Dress at the Wedding
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 133
Her boy himself was no paragon. She tells how he ca-
rouses with female companions until eight o'clock in the
morning, and looks as if he had just been pulled out of
the grave. She gives later a list and description of his
illegitimate children. He was mixed up — in 1696 — in
the affair of a sorceress and poisoner, but the King sup-
pressed the papers that compromised him. Madame
writes to her son in this connection: "He [the King]
has taken pains to prevent them from reading in full
court your letters from one of your dearest confidants
who will possibly be burned alive. that you may look
on this affair with the same horror that I do, and that it
may cure you forever from associating with such canaille !
My hair stands on end when I think of it ; for if the King
had not withdrawn your letters, you would have been lost
forever in the minds of all honest people." She later
speaks of " infamous purchases" her son has made for
the woman who is "to be burned for the greatest and most
horrible infamies in the world"; and declares that she
has lost all hope of ever seeing him an honest man. And
again: "This affair has made a furious commotion in
Paris, and, as people always exaggerate, they say that
my son was trying to learn to be a sorcerer. It has a
very bad effect." Later, in 1712, she writes: "My son
is just like the story of the fairies who were bidden
to the christening. One wishes that the child be well
formed; another that it be eloquent; the third that it
134 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
learn all the arts ; the fourth that it learn bodily exer-
cises, such as fencing, riding, and dancing ; the fifth wishes
him to thoroughly learn the art of war ; the sixth to have
more courage than another. But the seventh fairy, they
have forgotten to invite to the christening, she says:
1 1 cannot take from the child what my sisters have given
him, but all my life I shall be hostile to him so that every-
thing good that they have given him shall be of no use.
I will give him such an ugly walk that he shall be thought
to be lame and hunch-backed; I will make him grow
such a black beard and give him such grimaces as will
completely disguise him ; I will make him hate all bodily
exercise; I will fill him with a weariness that shall make
him hate all his arts, his music, his painting, his drawing ;
I will give him a love of loneliness and a horror of honest
people; I will often bring him misfortune in war; I
will persuade him that debauchery is very suitable for
him; I will give him a horror for the advice of his best
friends, — and therewith all the good shall be destroyed
with which my sisters have endowed him.'
"That is exactly what has happened and that is why he
would rather sit with his daughter and her chambermaids,
listening to silly jokes, than frequent upright people or
govern his own household as his rank demands. Now
your Grace knows all about it. ..."
The King's coldness to Madame grows very marked.
She writes in 1696: "They treat me very rudely here.
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 135
Every day they let me wait half an hour at the King's
door before admitting me. They often send me away
entirely. ... It is a little hard to swallow that they
treat one like a chambermaid. Monsieur himself en-
courages it, and the worse they treat me, the better he
likes it." She grew very pessimistic. "The splendor
and renown of great courts," she later writes, " is like the
scenery of an opera. Viewed from afar all is brilliant and
attractive ; but go behind the scenes, look at the ropes and
pulleys, and nothing can be more sordid and disgusting.
. . . You are quite right to thank God you are single,
for the best marriages are devilishly bad. I am neither
pretty, young, nor rich, but were I all three together and
a handsome shapely emperor wanted me, I should decline
with thanks. ... To be Madame is a miserable trade.
Could I have sold it as they sell the court posts in this
country, I should long since have put it on the market.
. . . Had I known what I know now, France would never
have seen me." No good, she declares, ever came of
changing one's religion.
Yet all the same she writes again later: "Court life
has this about it, and it has always been found, that how-
ever badly it may suit them, those who are accustomed
to it can never endure any other kind of life."
She goes on for years being in the court, but not of it.
"I am only in limbo," she writes in 1699, "where one hears
the joys of Paradise from afar, but does not share them."
136 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
In the same breath she tells of a visit to Madame deMainte-
non, whom she found sitting in an arm-chair with some
of the princes of the blood around her on tabourets : "They
did me the honor of bringing me a tabouret too, but I
assured them I was not tired. I had to bite my tongue
to keep from laughing. Times have indeed changed
since the King came to beg me to allow Madame Scarron
to eat with me just once merely to cut the Due du Maine's
food!"
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In 1700 came the turning point in Louis XIV's career.
He broke his treaties regarding the succession to the throne
of Spain and accepted the whole inheritance for his second
grandson, the Due d'Anjou, thus drawing down upon him-
self a ruinous war which lasted for fourteen years.
Madame has most interesting letters on the acceptance
of the crown, on the ceremony with which the new King
of Spain was treated by his own father and grandfather,
and on the leave-taking and departure, which, as was
doubtless anticipated at the time, was to be forever.
On November 10, 1700, Madame writes: "To-day I will
tell your Grace a great piece of news that came yesterday
morning, though they have long anticipated it, namely,
the death of the King of Spain. The Queen [of
Spain] is said to be ill with grief. The King died
on the 1st of this month at three in the afternoon.
' Philippe (Jin d uy'ov
Thk Die i) Anjou
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 137
To-day they sent our King the copy of the will. The
Due d'Anjou is appointed heir, and a grandee of Spain
is said to have taken post at once with the original will
in order to bring it to the Due d'Anjou and invite him to
be King. In case the King [Louis XIV] refuses it for
the Due d'Anjou, the same grandee of Spain has orders at
once to proceed to Vienna and offer the crown of Spain
to the Emperor. I imagine therefore that they are a
little embarrassed here about the treaty that has been
concluded with Holland and England. If they refuse
the crown, they will be playing the Due d'Anjou a mean
trick. I have been assured that the King publicly took
the Pantocrate with him yesterday into the council,
which seemed a little strange to the courtiers. We shall
soon see what the result will be ; as soon as I learn I will
tell your Grace. The Pantocrate is polite when she wishes
to be ; it is true she has not the grand air, but where should
she have got it from?"
A few days later we have this : " Yesterday every one
was whispering in the other's ear, 'Don't mention
it, but the King has accepted the crown of Spain for
the Due d'Anjou.' I kept perfectly still, but when on
the hunt I heard the Due d'Anjou behind me on a
narrow road, I stopped short and said : ' Pass on, great
King, pass on, your Majesty!' I wish your Grace
could have seen how amazed the good child was
that I should know about it. His little brother, the
138 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Due de Berry, nearly died laughing over it. He, the Due
d'Anjou, looks just like a King of Spain, — seldom
laughs and never loses his gravity. They say the King
secretly told him yesterday that he was King, but that
he was not to let any one know about it. He was playing
V ombre in his room, but he could not restrain himself.
He said nothing, indeed, but sprang up. But immediately
he sat down again with his former gravity, as if he knew
nothing about it. It is true this young King has not so
much vivacity as his youngest little brother, nor so much
intelligence. But otherwise he has exceptionally good
qualities: a good disposition, is generous (which few
of his house are) ; truthful, for nothing in the world can
make him tell a lie, and one cannot have a greater horror
of lying than he has. He will also keep his promises,
is merciful, has courage: in short, he is a right virtuous
prince without any guile in him. Were he a common
nobleman, one could say that he was a right honest man,
and I believe that those who are to be around him will
be happy. I believe he will be as strong as the King of
Poland [Augustus the Strong], for already a year ago the
strongest man here could not bend his wrists. He looks
right Austrian, — always has his mouth open. I speak
to him about it a hundred times. When he is told, he
shuts his mouth, for he is very obedient. But as soon as
he forgets himself, he opens his mouth again. He talks
very little except with me ; for I give him no rest but tor-
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 139
ment him the whole time. He has a harsh voice and speaks
very slowly; I make him laugh sometimes, too. I like
him better than the Due du Bourgogne, for he is good,
and not so scornful, — he is better looking, too. But
the one I love from my heart, as if he were my own child,
is the Due de Berry. He is a nice child, always merry,
and bursts out with the most comical things."
On November 18 Madame writes as follows: "In
order to amuse your Grace I will tell you how they
made the Spanish King here. Tuesday morning the
King summoned the good Due d'Anjou to his cabinet and
said to him, ' You are King of Spain.' Then he allowed
the Spanish ambassadors and all the Spaniards who are
living here to come in ; they fell at their King's feet and
kissed his hand, one after the other, and then stood behind
their King. Afterwards our King led the young King
of Spain into the salon, where the whole court was as-
sembled and said, ' Gentlemen, behold the King of Spain ;
salute him.' At once there was a cry of joy, and everyone
came up and kissed the young King's hand. Afterwards
our King said, 'Let us go and give thanks to God; come,
your Majesty, to mass.' He at onee gave the young King
his right hand, and they went together to the mass. The
King made him kneel next to him on his prie dieu and on
his right. After mass our King accompanied him to his
apartment, which is the large one ; afterwards his brothers
came and visited him. My Due de Berry was so happy
140 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
that he kissed the hand of his brother, the King of Spain,
for joy. In the afternoon the young King drove to
Meudon to visit his father, who is there. The latter went
to meet him as far as the antechamber. He had just been
in the garden and did not imagine that his son, the King
of Spain, would come so soon; so he was out of breath
when he arrived and said: 'I see one must never swear;
for I should certainly have sworn that I would never
put myself out of breath by going to meet my son, the
Due d'Anjou. Yet here I am, out of breath.' The good
young King was quite put out of countenance at seeing
himself treated like a foreign king by his father, who
conducted him to his coach when he drove away. Yester-
day morning Monseigneur returned the visit to his son,
the King."
Of the King of Spain she writes ten years later, showing
that his character had not changed in the meantime:
"If one were to say to him ' stay there !' and put him in
front of a hundred cannon, he would stand like a wall.
Again, if those he is used to should say 'go away/ he would
go at once. He does not trust himself, he does what he
is told."
The departure for Spain took place on December 4.
On the 5th Madame writes (and her letter shows that there
were some human feelings left to all these people): "I
must also tell your Grace about the sad day we had
yesterday, and how the parting with the dear good King
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of Spain went off. Yesterday at nine in the morning every-
one waited in his room. At ten we all went with our King
to the King of Spain, and from there to the mass which
we heard from the gallery. I don't know whether it
was the music that softened all hearts, but every one
began to weep. After mass we went down the great
staircase, which was perfectly full of people, as was also
the outer court. The big Princesse de Conti and my son
accompanied me to the coach, for they were not going
with us to Sceaux. In the King's coach we were eight:
the two Kings had the Duchesse de Bourgogne between
them; the Dauphin and the Due de Bourgogne had the
Due de Berry between them ; Monsieur and I sat on the
side seats. From here to Sceaux the road was lined with
people on foot, on horseback and in coaches. The King
had his guards, his light horse, and his gendarmes, and
at Sceaux were the two companies of musketeers. The
Avenue de Sceaux is very long, longer than from here
to Trianon ; on both sides it was occupied by three rows
of coaches which had drawn up there to see the departure
of the King of Spain. It is thought that there were more
than two thousand coaches at Sceaux, not counting the
King's and those that followed the court. As soon as we
had got out at Sceaux, which by the way, belongs now
to the Due du Maine who bought it from young Seignelay,
the King went through the double file into the last room
and commanded that no one should follow. We all
142 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
stayed in a salon with Monseigneur and his two sons. A
quarter of an hour later the King summoned the Spanish
ambassador who stayed in there a little while. When he
came out, the King called the Dauphin and remained
another quarter of an hour with him. Afterwards the
King called the Due de Bourgogne, his wife, the Due de
Berry, Monsieur, and me, and there we took leave of the
King of Spain, and his brothers. All wept heartily. We
stayed a quarter of an hour, and then the King summoned
the princes and princesses of the blood, who all took leave.
Every one wept and wailed. The Dauphin, who generally
seems quite indifferent, was terribly affected and embraced
his son with such tenderness that I still have to weep
when I so much as think of it. I thought father and son
would die of grief. The good King embraced me also so
from his heart that I could not speak a word for weeping.
The King said at last, "Let some one go and see if every-
thing is ready." Shortly afterwards a voice called,
"Sire, everything is ready." "So much the worse,"
said the King of Spain. We embraced once again. The
good Due de Berry wept, and doubtless from the bottom
of his heart; the Due de Bourgogne did not actually
weep, but his eyes were red. Our King accompanied the
King of Spain to the end of the apartments. One heard
and saw nothing but pocket handkerchiefs and wiping of
eyes ; men and women all wept bitterly. As soon as the
King of Spain and his brothers had driven off, the Dauphin
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 143
got into his chaise and drove to Meudon, our King got
into a little caleche with the Duchesse de Bourgogne,
Monsieur and I took a drive and looked at Sceaux, which
is a wonderfully beautiful garden."
******
History was indeed in the making under Madame's
eyes. She continues to follow the doings of William
of England with great interest and to criticise King
James' piety. " I cannot endure praying Kings/' she
writes in 1696 ; " that is not what God put them on their
thrones for. . . . Let them pray morning and evening
and make their subjects happy the rest of the time."
Of King James, Matthew Prior, the English poet, writes
from Paris in 1698: "This court is gone to see their
monarch a cock-horse at Compeigne. ... I faced old
James and all his court the other day at St. Cloud [where
they had doubtless been to visit Madame] ; vive Guillaume !
You never saw such a strange figure as the old bully is,
lean, worn, and riv'led, not unlike Neale the projectour;
the Queen looks very melancholy, but otherwise well
enough; their equipages are all very ragged and con-
temptible."
A friend of Prior's writes a little later to the Duke
of Shrewsbury : "I had a letter from Prior yesterday. . . .
He hears that King James and his Queen are highly
caressed at Fontainebleau ; that the chief court was made
to Queen Mary, everybody being at her toilet in the morn-
144 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
ing; that the King of France comes thither to lead her
to chapel ; that at meals the Queen is placed between the
two Kings at the upper end of the table, and equal marks
of distinction and sovereignty are paid to all three, and
a boire pour le Roi aV Angleterre, ou pour la Reine is spoken
out as loud, and with as much ceremony, as for the King
of France."
Yet all the same Madame writes in 1700: "They still
live on polite terms with these royal personages here, but
they do all that King William desires."
Madame herself had a curious antipathy to the English
as a people. "It has been observed," she writes, "that
all insular people are more false and malicious than those
who live on terra ftrma. . . . Don't be so foolish, dear
Louisa, as to die in England. ... A good honest
German is better than all the English put together. . . .
The English are crazy people who are difficult to get along
with and who all hate their Kings. When Lord Peter-
borough was here, he praised our King extremely. Some
one said, 'What! are you praising Kings now?' 'I love
all Kings,' he answered, ' except our own.' What hope or
trust can one put in such people?"
After the Duke of Gloucester's death in August, 1700,
Madame becomes more and more interested in English
affairs because of her aunt's nearness to the succession.
"It would be nice if your Grace could still be Queen,"
she writes : "I had rather it happened to your Grace than
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 145
to myself." She is convinced that Queen Anne, because
she is such a hard drinker, cannot live long. She fears,
indeed, that it wall be difficult for her aunt to keep such
a crazy people as the English in order, but later she
changes her tone and declares that she is grateful to the
English for showing such affection for the Electress.
In the summer of 1701 King James' health began
visibly to fail. It is his unbounded piety, Madame
avers, that is killing him ; and she tells how he has knelt
and prayed so long that at last he fell over in a swoon.
She drives to St. Germain to see him and finds him in a
most wretched state, but grateful for her solicitude.
She tells of touching scenes between him and his children,
and of how they had to tear the Prince of Wales away from
him by force. " Nothing was more pitiful than to see this
court," so Madame writes; "they made me weep from
my very heart. The good Queen is in an indescribable
condition. It would move a stone to tears. . . . This
King is dying like a regular saint. . . . Everything is
most melancholy here ; one hears of nothing but of agony,
death, and misfortune." She tells of the famous assur-
ance of Louis that he will regard and proclaim James'
son as King of England, but adds, "I could not help
thinking that it would do more harm than good to this
young King."
She tells with some detail how they " opened " King
James after his death and found "everything in his body
146 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
decayed and his heart withered up." And again: "No
wonder King James' blood was entirely corrupted through
the grief the poor King had to bear. He said before his
death that he had suffered horribly, and that what had
mortified him most had been that people had considered
him unfeeling and despised him for it. . . . He was
the best man in the world, but his weakness was priests.
I have never seen a greater passion than he had for them.
If he was in conversation with the King or one of us and
a clerk or priest, especially a Jesuit, chanced to come into
the room, he dropped everything and ran up to him."
To conclude here with Madame's relations to the exiled
Stuarts, it may be said that she felt a warm affection for
the Pretender and always hoped to see him back upon his
throne. "The Prince of Wales," she writes in 1695, "is
very well-behaved. I think with time he will have much
intelligence, for he is full of vivacity. If what they tell
me is true, he is not likely to become a bigot. English
nuns had sent him a chapel which was very prettily made.
His tutor, wishing to inspire him with a love of prayer,
thought he could do it better in this doll's chapel, which
was large enough for the Prince to enter. But the Prince
of Wales, instead of praying, took a stick and broke the
chapel to pieces. They were about to scold him, but he
said, 'Why should I not hate what made me lose my
kingdom?' These words so frightened the bystanders
that nobody said anything more to him."
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 147
Madame writes in December, 1702: " Tuesday I drove
to St. Germain and visited the unhappy royalties there.
I am afraid the Queen will die finally, for her Majesty is
as thin and dried up as a pole, looks pale as death, and
night and day does nothing but weep. She cannot sleep
any more at night- and cannot become resigned to her mis-
fortune; so I fear that her Majesty will waste away en-
tirely. The little King is growing fast, but his chin is get-
ting a little too thin. He is altogether very thin. The
little Princess is large for her age, too, and has a pretty
waist and figure ; but her face is not pretty at all. She
has pretty eyes, indeed, but a very big mouth, and the
face is too long and narrow for her age. Good King
James wrote letters to the King and to the late Monsieur
which were found in his portfolio. They are perfect
sermons. "
In December, 1707, we have this : "Our young King of
England may have good sense and intelligence, but he has
no vivacity. He is well brought up, exceedingly polite,
but always dreamy and sad and unhealthy. There is
always something the matter. He laughs himself at his
reveries and distractions and is not angry at all when one
laughs at him for it. He has a very good disposition,
has a great respect and love for the Queen, his mother, and
a tender love for his sister, who is quite different in char-
acter from himself."
And in March, 1708, this: "We are daily expecting
148 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
news that our young King of England has arrived in
Scotland. They have only once had news from his
Majesty since they sailed away from Ostende with a
good breeze. A frigate met this King a hundred miles
from Dunkirk, and they had just had news that all Scot-
land had declared for him, was awaiting him with longing,
and would immediately, as soon as his Majesty should
have landed, proclaim him King. It serves Queen Anne
right. She was so eager for war; now she will have war
enough. They say it is her purse that has kept up the
war until now ; God grant that she may need her money,
so that the Emperor may be compelled to make peace.
... I had to laugh at your Grace calling the King of
England the 'King in partibus,' like a bishop. But he
really is the lawful heir."
"Is not the Chevalier St. George perfectly right to
wish to mount the throne of his fathers," she asks in
1715, "and to do his utmost to that end? One can
blame him as little for it as one can King George for
wishing to maintain himself on his throne. . . . Lord
Stairs thought Chevalier St. George had left Bar,
but where should the poor prince go to without a ship
and without troops? At the present moment there is
certainly no danger from his expeditions, but in time war
may come of it if this prince do not die soon. . . . There
is a report here that the Chevalier St. George has fled,
has found a bark, and gone to England. If so, King
ie& 4'«/U£ a,JL'ar%f c^x Thernnur-rin rut «/ " TeLcquts ■vur a -vis f*t rue Ju FLitrc a. Itrn.iqf *? Icasi j4u<< frit''^
The Old Pretender
THE KING'S GRANDSONS 149
George will have something to do. I wish you were all
away from the cursed false people. . . ."
News comes of the landing: "I imagine a great many
will be untrue to King George now that the Chevalier
St. George is in Scotland. They told me this evening
how he escaped. He was at Commercy, at the Prince de
Vaudemont's, and went stag hunting. After the hunt
he gave them a hunt supper (a retour de chasse), they
were at table until four in the morning. When he got to
his room, he said that he had been up too late to rise early,
and that they should let him sleep until two in the after-
noon. When his people came to wake him at two, they
found the bed empty. They were frightened and ran
to Prince de Vaudemont. He pretended to know nothing
about it, and said they must search for Chevalier St.
George. After they had searched everywhere for him
for an hour and not found him, the Prince de Vaudemont
said: 'Let us go to dinner, for all the drawbridges are
up, and no one can leave this castle for three days/
So the Chevalier St. George escaped incognito into
Brittany. There, as a tourist, he took a fishing smack,
that took him out to sea to a large Scotch ship, in which
were many Scotch lords, who are with him in Scot-
land. . . .
" My God, how can they be merry in London with all
the troubles ! So long as King George and Chevalier
St. George are living, the internal war cannot possibly
150
A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
cease. That is not to be expected. . . . The Queen of
England here is very stout-hearted and seldom looks sad.
She has intelligence and firmness and is very agreeable
in conversation. . . . What I see here, especially in the
way of women, gives me more vexation and annoyance
than pleasure. . . .
" If wishes were any use, I would wish that the Em-
peror might die without heirs, that our King George,
might be chosen Emperor of the Romans, and that
young King James were in England making the best
out of them that he can."
CHAPTER VI
Madame's Interests — Peculiarities
We must pass very rapidly over a number of years in
Madame's life. Monsieur became pensive and sad, and
his wife writes that it is because he finds that at sixty
he cannot be as dissipated as in his prime. He is occa-
sionally very disagreeable to her and once bursts out with
"You are old, you are almost fifty years old!" She
answers that she at any rate has the advantage of him, for
he is twelve years older still. On the whole, however,
the relations improve. When, in 1701, Monsieur was
taken with a stroke of apoplexy, he was quite tender
towards her, which touched her very much indeed. In
announcing his death to her aunt she declares that she
is the most unhappy woman in the world ; and, indeed,
she is long confined to her bed with fever. Once she rises,
finds the box where he has kept his letters and destroys,
unread, a host of compromising communications from his
151
152 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
wretched companions in vice. She intends that the world
shall never know the worst.
She has to go through ceremonies that are irksome to
her in the extreme. "I had to receive the King and
Queen of England," she writes, "in an absurd costume —
a white linen brow-band, over that a hood tied under the
chin, over the hood a coif, over the coif a piece of linen
like a veil which is fastened at the shoulders like a gauze
mantle and trails to the length of seven ells. On my body
I had a long black cloth coat with long sleeves reaching
to the wrist, two handbreadths deep of ermine on the
sleeves, a black crepe girdle falling to the ground in front,
and a train to the ermine skirt likewise seven ells long.
In this costume they put me in a perfectly black room,
with even the floor and the windows covered, in a black
bed, with the train folded back so as to show the ermine.
A great chandelier with twelve candles was lighted in the
room, and there were ten or twelve more candles on the
mantelpiece. All my servitors, large and small, were in
long mourning mantles, and some forty or fifty ladies
were in long gauze mantles. It was all perfectly horrid. "
Naturally enough her grief for Monsieur does not last
long. She is glad when the King allows her to wear
lighter mourning than is strictly de rigueur, and soon is
chafing horribly because she cannot go to the plays.
She permits her mind to dwell, too, on Monsieur's short-
comings.
A Fountain in the Labyrinth
MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 153
In the same year as Monsieur, King William of England
died and was succeeded by the childless Queen Anne.
But for her hollow conversion to Catholicism Madame
would then have been the next heir to the throne. Her
German friends seem to have cherished hopes for her in
spite of the Act of Succession. She writes to her half-
sister : "If the English were like other nations, one might
hope that they would remain firm in their resolution regard-
ing my aunt and her children; but it is a faithless and
false nation on which one can never rely. I do not know
if your and Frau von Ratsamshausen's ideas are identical ;
if they are the same, I can only answer that I am too old
to think of anything but of ending my days in peace. No
one thinks of me, and I can take my sacred oath that I have
no other designs than those I have always professed. But
all the same I am very much obliged to you, dear Louisa,
for wishing me what you think would be for my good."
Monsieur left debts to the amount of seven and a half
million francs, and all of Madame's jewels, even the pearls
she has been in the habit of wearing, have to go towards
filling the chasm. She writes later: "Since the late Mon-
sieur's death I have worn only false pearls, but they are so
exactly like the ones I had before that every one thinks
them the same. I was once with the Queen of England
at St. Germain, and, in coughing, the pearls broke from my
neck. The Queen threw herself on the ground to search
for the pearls. I helped her up and said: 'Ah, Madame,
154 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
your Majesty must not take this trouble. I am very
munificent, I will leave my pearls to your people.' The
Queen looked at me and said, 'God pardon me, from this
discourse I almost fear that they are false.' I answered,
' Madame, you have said it.' The Queen had never noticed
it, nor any one else."
On the whole the King treats Madame most generously,
and her income amounts to 450,000 francs a year. There
is a reconciliation with him, and even with Madame de
Maintenon, who pays her a long visit and has an intimate
talk with her about her former shortcomings. According
to Saint-Simon, who loves to tell anything derogatory to
Madame, Madame de Maintenon flaunted in her enemy's
face a letter to the latter's aunt which had been inter-
cepted in the mail. Madame "nearly died on the spot."
Further revelations " struck her motionless as a statue,"
and finally made her "weep, scream, confess, and de-
mand pardon." Madame de Maintenon looked in cold
triumph on the "proud and arrogant German," allowed
her to weep, to seize her hands, and to grow hoarse with
talking, but at last condescended to make friends.
There is no doubt about the reconciliation. Madame
writes in 1702: " The King was so gracious day before
yesterday as to summon me to Madame de Maintenon's.
. . . Madame de Maintenon invited me by a note to the
comedy of Absalom, to which I went." Madame is out-
wardly even too servile to Madame de Maintenon ; one is
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MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 155
sorry to have to acknowledge that it is because it lies in
her interests. She complains, however, "She [the Mainte-
non] is always very polite to me, and the King too ; but
there it stops." And again she writes that she alone of
the royal household is not of the inner circle and may
not go into the King's private apartments — the holy
of holies she always calls it. She writes in 1709 that
she only sees the King at ten at night at supper; that
after supper she goes to the King's outer room, " where
I stand about long enough to say a Lord's Prayer and
make a courtesy. The King goes into his cabinet with
the princes and the Duchesse de Bourgogne, and I to my
room, where I give my doggies biscuit, wind my clocks,
look at my rare stones, change my rings, and then, to
bed." Her doggies, she declares, are the most faithful
friends she has in France. Six of them sleep in her bed at
night. She has just heard of a new invention called eider-
down quilts. "I never in my life heard of an eider-down
quilt," she writes. "What keeps me right warm in bed
are six little doggies which lie round me. No quilt is
as warm as the good doggies."
She has invented beautiful names for them: Titi,
Charmille, Boabdille, and the like. She has one called
Candace nee Robe, "She is called nee Robe," she writes,
"because her mother, Charmille, gave birth to her on my
velvet skirt as I was talking to Madame la Princesse [of
Conde] on a divan. Madame la Princesse suddenly said to
156 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
me, 'Your dog is acting queerly,' and putting my hand
behind me, I found the little animal all wrapped up in its
skin and still on my dress."
Madame has grown very stout by this time, — with the fat
all in the wrong places, she explains, — and she declares that
when she wears hanging sleeves, she looks for all the world
like an Indian pagoda. She ' ' has to laugh about the pagoda
every time she passes a mirror." But she is not always
laughing; and perhaps this letter will show a side of her
character that my readers have little suspected. It is from
Versailles, where her room looked directly on to the terrace
and across to the forest : " It is here the finest weather in the
world. Last night I listened at a window to the singing
of the nightingales until half-past twelve. I had all the
windows open; there was not a breeze stirring. Every-
thing is now green, and a lovely spring with clear skies has
come upon us. It reminds me of what I heard in my
youth in Heidelberg in a play in which my dead brother
acted, '0 Spring, youth of the year, beautiful mother of
the flowers, of the green herbs, and of fresh love, you in-
deed return; but with you does not return the lovely
joyous springtime of my youth.' "
On another occasion she wrote in a similar moralizing
strain: "It seems to me that we are our Lord God's
marionettes; for we are made to go to and fro and
play all sorts of personages, and then all at once we
fall and the play is ended. The Punchinello is Death,
Thk Electress Sophia
MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 157
who gives each his final blow and thrusts him off the
stage."
The reader must have realized by this time what a really
rare talent Madame had for letter-writing. Her aunt in
Hanover showed some of the letters to the great Leib-
nitz, who evidently was very complimentary about them.
Madame writes: "I am glad Monsieur Leibnitz has
never seen me, or he would soon lose his high opinion
of me and would find, as the precieuses say, 'that I
have the form very much hidden in the 'matter.' But
it does give me pleasure that so sensible a man as he
should consider that I have lumieres. It makes me
right proud."
There is indeed a spontaneity about the letters that is ir-
resistible, — especially when one considers that she usually
carried on conversation while she was writing. "I have
had to accustom myself to talk to people when I am
writing," she says, "for here one makes enemies if one does
not talk to people. But there is one good thing about it :
it is all the same what one says to them ; if they are only
spoken to, they are satisfied." She would so much rather
be alone! "Darling Louisa," she once writes, "I believe
the devil in hell has escaped from his chains to drive me
crazy. . . . When I was just about to answer you and
Mademoiselle de Malauze, the devil au contretemps sent
half a dozen duchesses, who made me lose all my time."
And again: "There come a lot of princes. . . . My God,
158 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
how often one is interrupted!" Her regular habit was
to take the last letter of her correspondent and answer
it paragraph by paragraph; but a name or a statement
will start her off on reminiscences. Some one mentions
Leibnitz, for instance. That reminds her of Descartes,
and we have the following : " Descartes 's idea of the watch
seems to me in very bad taste. Once I embarrassed a
bishop who is entirely of Descartes's opinion. The
bishop is naturally jealous, and I said to him: 'When
you are jealous, are you machine or man? For I know
nothing more jealous than you except my dogs, and should
like to know if it is a movement of the machine or a pas-
sion of the soul.' He got angry and went away without
giving me an answer."
Here is a good specimen of her casual style : "I am sorry
you were so hasty and had two sound teeth drawn. That
is just the way to lose them all, one after the other; for if
you have teeth drawn, it is sure to send the humors over to
the other teeth, and one is lucky if one does not lose them
all. Our King lost all his that way. Only two of mine are
gone; they broke in my mouth. Another, front one, is
broken, and all the rest are frightfully gray and yellow,
but they have not hurt me so far — I'm afraid I'm not
clever ! I read your last letter so hastily as not to notice
that what you, dear Louisa, had had drawn, and what wor-
ried me so, were blisters and not teeth. I have to laugh at
my own foolishness. One need not make excuses when
MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 159
talking of teeth, for there is nothing to be ashamed of
about them."
Nothing worries her, least of all her dogs. "Titi has
just jumped on the table and blotted out what I had
written," she writes — but continues on the same page.
It is in her letters to the Electress that Madame is most
frank and outspoken, particularly in letters she is able to
forward to her by private hand. For, as I have said, there
was a regular department of the government known as the
cabinet noir for tampering with private letters in the post,
and Madame, according to her own account at least, was
under constant surveillance — possibly because of her Prot-
estant sympathies.
"That the letters are well sealed signifies nothing,"
Madame once writes. "They have a mixture of quick-
silver and other stuff ; this they press on the seal, taking
its exact size. When the impression is taken and they ex-
pose it to the air, it gets very hard, and they can use it for
sealing again. From the letter they break off all the wax,
noticing whether it is black or red. When they have read
and copied the letter, they seal it again neatly. No one
can tell that it has been opened. My son can make the
amalgam; I use it just for fun." Once, she declares, in
reenclosing her letters they have put into one of them
sheets that belonged in another. She frequently writes
little messages to the "gentlemen who open my letters,"
hopes that they will translate her German better next
160 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
time, declares they had better not get her angry, and hurls
dire threats at them. "Be it known to the inquisitive and
curious, that I am not a bit afraid of them," she once inter-
polates; ". . . that is what is called an avis au lecteur."
"It is pure arrogance and malice," she writes late in life,
"that the post goes so irregularly; for the letters never
need take more than a week to arrive. But then there
would be no provision for inquisitive curiosity. They
ought by rights to be tired of my letters after reading
them constantly for forty-nine years. I suspect it is the
fault neither of Prince Taxis nor of Baron Weltz that my
letters go wrong, but of Torcy and the Archbishop of
Cambray, — not loving me especially, they try to find
something in my letters that will get me into trouble."
After the Electress Sophia's death in 1714 it is Louisa,
Madame's half-sister, who falls heir to the chief outpourings
of her heart. "Of all my correspondents," Madame writes
to the latter, " there is only one in whose letters I could take
pleasure, and she is no more. I mean our dear Electress.
My daughter's letters are agreeable to me, but they are
never gay ; for she is always either ill, enceinte, or has some
other complaint to make. The Queen of Sicily, whom I
love, too, as though she were my own child, is still full of
grief over the loss of her eldest prince. The letters of the
Queen of Spain at Bayonne, consist of nothing but compli-
ments and commissions. . . . She seems a good creature,
but I wish she would not use childish words to which I am
A Fountain in thk Lahyrinth
MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 161
not accustomed, like Herzensmamachen, 'little treasure/
'little heart.' I shall never be able to get used to them,
so these letters can give me no pleasure either: so I tell
you truly, dear Louisa, your letters are among the most
agreeable I can now receive." How large her correspond-
ence was may be gathered from the following: " To-day,
Sunday, for example, I have to write to you and to Lor-
raine ; Mondays to the Queen of Prussia, the Queen of
Spain in Bayonne, and the Queen of Sicily; Tuesdays
I write again to Lorraine and to the Princess of Wales, to
whom I write twenty sheets at the very least — usually
twenty-four or even twenty-eight like these [her letters
are on especially large gold-rimmed paper] ; Thursdays I
write to you, dear Louisa, to Monsieur Harling, and to
Baron Goertz ; Fridays I have again the English and the
Lorraine posts."
"Dear Louisa/' a plain, pious old maid who once
writes to know if it is proper to mention one's foot in
company, was very much honored by the devotion Ma-
dame showed her, and would try to explain how unat-
tractive she was and how little she could do in return.
Madame wrote to her once : "Do you think I want merely
Venuses or beautiful Helens, and that I have none about
me but dancers and acrobats ? Your immoderate humility
makes me laugh. Why should I not be fond of you ? Are
we not closely enough related for that ? Ah ! now the
reason strikes me — your debauchery and godless life !
162 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
I did not think of it at first, but that must be it ! But
those one sees here, particularly the princesses of the blood,
are so virtuous that they have virtue to spare, dear
Louisa, — more than enough to cover your faults. All
except Madame la Princesse, — she is as godless and de-
bauched as yourself."
The letters are avowedly for the purpose of entertaining,
which fact must be taken into consideration in judging
Madame's character. She tells after the Electress's death
how she had made a practice of collecting everything she
could for her amusement ; and as the Electress herself was
daring, witty, and prof ane, it may be taken for granted that
many of Madame's worst utterances were for the express
purpose of outdoing her. The tone of the letters varies
very much according to the correspondent. With the
Princess of Wales, wife of George II, she confines herself
mainly to harmless reminiscences, for Louisa has sent her
an urgent warning not to be too confidential.
Madame's topics vary all the way from discussions on
the foundations of religious belief to a description of the
Duchesse de Bourgogne's latest dress. The notes on reli-
gion are particularly edifying. She believes in another
world: "I think that even were it not true that there is
another life after this, one would do well to imagine it, if
only for one's own consolation. It is really too horrible to
be nothing but food for the worms." But she does not ex-
pect to meet again those whom she has known here below :
The Duchks.sk i>k Boukuogne's LATEST DBE8S
MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 163
"I conclude that that world will be different and that one
will think of nothing but our Lord God and of praising
Him. ... So my own death cannot console me for those
I have lost ; it can only console me for leaving all that is
wicked and vexatious here and enjoying eternal rest." In
this connection she writes again : "As to our knowing each
other in the other world, there we are of different opinions,
dear Louisa. Were that the case, an entirely new miracle
would have to happen. When we have been twenty or
thirty years without seeing our best friends, we scarcely
know them again, let alone when one has been dead so
many hundred years. That is my opinion. Why should
our Lord God make nothing perfect except what is in our
shape ? . . . Is it not favor enough that He should have
given us His only Son to free us from everlasting damna-
tion? What more can we ask of Him? "
Among her religious duties Madame did not reckon the
kind of devoutness she saw about her. She writes : " I
believe Monsieur is ' devout ' so as to be like Henry III in
everything. If that is the way to heaven, I shall certainly
not get in. Unless I have to hear grand mass, I am quickly
through with our service, for I have a chaplain who gets
through the mass in a quarter of an hour. That is the
right way for me. ... In 'devoutness/ as I see it here,
every one follows his own natural bent. Those who are
fond of talking incline to pray a great deal ; those who
are generous wish always to give alms; those who are
164 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
easily angered and choleric always get excited and want
to kill everything; those, on the other hand, who are
merry by nature think that they are doing God a service
by rejoicing over everything and being angered at
nothing : in short, he who gives himself over to devout-
ness sets himself up as the touchstone to show his true
character. But those that I find worst of all are the ones
who have ambition in their heads and wish to rule every-
thing under the mantle of devoutness, giving out that
they are doing God a great service by bringing every-
thing into their power. The easiest to get along with
are the ones that have been very much in love; for
they, if they once take God for an object, think of nothing
else but of saying tender things to our Lord God and leave
other people in peace."
In another letter Madame tells us in just what her own
" devoutness" consists : " I am not so fortunate as to have
a faith strong enough to move mountains, and I am too
straightforward to pretend to be devout without being so.
So I content myself with not sinning too badly against the
commandments and in not harming my neighbor. I ad-
mire God Almighty without understanding Him. I praise
Him morning and evening, let Him continue to rule as He
pleases, and submit to His will. For apart from it I well
know that nothing can happen. Now your Grace knows
all my ' devoutness.' . . ."
In doctrine Madame was a Calvinist, as was natural for
MADAME'S INTERESTS — PECULIARITIES 165
one brought up in the Palatinate. But she contends that
neither Luther nor Calvin should have seceded from the
church. She is a firm believer in predestination. "I am
heartily glad," she writes, "that your Grace is of my
opinion and believe in a destiny and sequence in everything.
One sees it so plainly in a hundred matters that I cannot
comprehend how one can doubt it. However strong may
be our love of self, which alone can make us think that our
wills are free, we nevertheless so often find in our lives
that something besides our will impels and guides us
that beyond a doubt we do nothing but what was long
since prescribed for us, and one thing brings about
another."
There was no asceticism in her creed. "God pardon
me," she writes, "but on account of my sins I have never
in my life been able to weep." And again: "There are
many places in the Bible that say that one must mortify
the body ; the Old and the New Testament are full of it.
But I think it is enough to bear patiently the evil that
comes to us from the hand of God without torturing our-
selves. I never could endure La Trappe. What did it
signify to all those poor people that the Abbe de Ranee lost
his mistress, Madame de Montbazon, and was in despair?
For that made him think out La Trappe, and nothing else
in the world. I don't consider that devoutness in the least.
But apropos ! I forget that I had to promise my confessor
not to speak of this."
166 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
She considered the Inquisition "a perfectly devilish
thing" and hated the Dominicans like monsters: "They
seem to me like executioners ... I do not believe that
it is permitted to any one to say, 'These shall be saved,
and those damned/ "
Madame, besides going to chapel, read three chapters of
the Bible a day, and if she missed one or more days, made
it up later. She read critically, too, in spite of her own
assertions to the contrary. "I take in and understand
the Bible still less than your Grace," she writes, "but
I like to read the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
What I least like to read in the Bible are the Epistles;
I find them confused and tiresome. . . . Titi has just
jumped on my paper and made me make two blots. I
humbly beg pardon, but I hope your Grace will dispense
me from copying this letter and graciously excuse Titi's
impertinence, for I have a great deal to write to-day.
I must still write letters to Spain, England, and Lor-
raine, and also two or three to Paris."
Here are some of her criticisms of the Bible: "If we
take the devil as he appears in Job, it seems as if he were
the Lord God's buffoon and not hated of God, for he con-
verses in a friendly manner with Him. But this is opposed
to what the clergy say, that the devil's greatest torture is
in being condemned never to see Almighty God. They
ought to arrange it so as to accord better with the Holy
Gospel. ... To tell the truth, the dialogue between our
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But it is time to see how the King had been faring
all this time.
Things had gone badly for him in the war. The
French lost the battles of Blenheim, Turin (at which
latter battle Madame's son commanded), Ramillies, and
Malplaquet. After Blenheim Madame sadly enumerates
those of her ladies and of her acquaintances who have
lost their only sons. "One sees nothing but bereaved
people, which is quite pitiful," she writes. "War is a
horrible thing. . . . What happened at Blenheim is
well worth singing a Te Deum over in Germany. . . .
They do not belittle this battle here at all, but confess
openly that it is lost, and that Tallard was beaten be-
cause the cavalry did not do its duty. . . . Here they
are too sad to sing, and not a single song has been written
against Monsieur Tallard, though he merits it more than
some others. . . . The whole court, almost, is in mourn-
ing. Madame de Cornuel used to say, 'The Te Deum of
The Duke of Marlborough
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 181
the great prince is often the de profundis of the ordinary
person.'"
In the year of Malplaquet she writes: "There is no
laughing about anything any more; everything here is
growing very earnest. The King has sent all his gold
plate to the mint [all the silver furniture had long since
been melted down]: gold dishes set with diamonds and
rubies, very beautiful ; a nef in which the napkins are
put, which is the finest work the eye could look upon, —
all that is to be melted up. I am especially sorry about
the nef There is a fine crown on it of diamonds and
beautiful rubies. It makes one moralize terribly." This
was the nef to which the courtiers bowed in passing,
and its destruction must indeed have seemed to Ma-
dame a symbol of the King's departing glory.
"In my lifetime," she writes again, "I have never
seen such sad times as now. The common people are
dying like flies from cold and poverty ; every class of
people are sad and have lost this year either friends or
relatives. Every one [at court] dines and lives apart;
there is no more holding court except at supper, where
no one opens his mouth. . . ."
It was at this juncture that Louis XIV bent his pride
to the extent of sending an envoy to demand of the
Dutch their probable conditions for peace. Galling as
these were, the Due de Beauvilliers, in a council of war
at Versailles, painted the miseries of France in such
182 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
colors that the Due de Bourgogne burst into tears, and
the whole council followed suit. It was determined to
make peace at almost any price, and one of the minis-
ters, Torcy, was despatched to treat directly with the
Duke of Marlborough, with Prince Eugene, and with
the Grand Pensionary of Holland. Torcy found that
the terms previously offered were merely illusory. He
was prepared to make enormous sacrifices, but to one
demand he could not and would not yield: that Louis,
namely, should make war against his own grandson and
drive him out of Spain. Louis exclaimed when he heard
the proposition, "If I have to make war, I had rather
make it against my enemies than against my own chil-
dren!"
Madame for once expresses herself vehemently on
questions of state policy. She thinks it better to waste
away and die than submit to such shame, and does not
see how any one could ever imagine that Louis could
consent: "The insolence of Eugene and Marlborough
will surely be punished, and pride is going before a fall.
... It is abominable and unprecedented that they
should wish to compel a grandfather to make war against
his own grandson, who assumed the crown of Spain
through mere obedience. They seem not to wish peace."
Madame had known personally the chief actors in the
war. Of Prince Eugene of Savoy she writes as follows
in 1710: "Prince Eugene's merits have grown in Ger-
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 183
many like his hair, for when he was here, one saw no
trace of them. Quite the contrary; he was nothing but
a dirty, very dissipated boy who gave no promise of
amounting to anything. I can perfectly truly assure
your Grace of that."
Again in 1712: "They do not seem to think Prince
Eugene so ugly in London as they do in Holland. If
bravery and intelligence make a hero, Prince Eugene is
certainly a hero ; if other virtues are needed, there might
be a discrepancy. In his Madame Simone and Madame
l'Ancienne days he was looked upon here as a little
salop. At that time he wanted a benefice bringing in
only 2000 thalers ; it was refused him on account of his
horrible debauchery. So he went off to the imperial
court, where he made his fortune. His diamond sword,
which Queen Anne gave him, must be the best thing
about him."
And still again in 1720: "Prince Eugene I should not
have recognized from his portrait; for when he was
here he had a short snub nose, and in the engraving
they make him a long pointed nose. His nose was so
snubby that he always kept his mouth open, and one
saw the whole of the two large front teeth. I know
him very well ; I often plagued him when he was still a
child. They wanted him to enter the church; he was
dressed like an abbe. But I always assured him that
he would not remain one, and so it turned out. When
184 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
he left off the clerical dress, the young people called him
nothing but Madame Simone, and Madame l'Ancienne,
for they pretended that he often acted the lady with
young people. So you see, dear Louisa, that I know
Prince Eugene very well. I knew his whole family:
father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts; so
he is not at all unknown to me and cannot possibly
have acquired a long pointed nose. Madame la Duchesse
d'Orleans says perhaps his teeth have fallen out, and
that has pulled down his snub nose. I don't know
whether that is possible."
Of Marlborough she writes in 1710: "Lord Marl-
borough is, as I see, more miserly than Seigneur Harpa-
gon [in Moliere's Avare]. I have not spoken much with
him, but I have seen him twice in this country. At that
time he had a fine figure and face, and did not look at
all like a miser, for he was well and magnificently dressed
and had quite fine wigs."
And again in 1712: "I think, as I have often said,
that Queen Anne was right to punish Marlborough; his
wife and he were quite too insolent to the Queen. But
Parliament ought to reward him, for he did good service.
Stinginess is not punishable unless one steals."
While the war was still going on, there fell upon
Louis XIV a perfect avalanche of other misfortunes.
Retribution had at last come for all the evil the proud
King had done ; a blight withered the house of Bourbon.
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Prince Eugene of Savoy
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 185
In 1711 the Dauphin was stricken with the small-pox.
Madame writes, while still under the excitement, that
she has been roused from her bed at midnight by one
of her ladies announcing that the Dauphin was dying at
his palace at Meudon ; that the King at that very mo-
ment was driving through Versailles to Marly, having, as
was the custom of the court, fled the house of death.
"A moment later," writes Madame, "they said it was all
over, that the Dauphin was dead. Your Grace can read-
ily imagine what a dreadful state of terror this produced.
I, too, ordered my coaches and quickly dressed again. I
ran straight across to the Duchesse de Bourgogne, where
I came on a piteous spectacle. The Due and Duchesse
de Bourgogne were perfectly overwhelmed; they were
pale as death and said not a single word. The Due and
Duchesse de Berry lay on the floor with their elbows on
a sofa and shrieking to be heard three rooms off." Saint-
Simon, who saw Madame as she hurried to the Duchesse
de Bourgogne's room, makes merry over her punctilious-
ness in being in a long-trained dress, en grand habit, for
fear she might meet the King. But it is evident from
her own words that she caught up the garments she had
just taken off; moreover, she tells us once that she has
no other dresses in the world but her grand habit and
her hunting costume.
She drove the next morning to see the King at Marly.
"He is in a state of sorrow," she writes, "that would
186 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
move a stone to pity; and yet he is not irritable, but
speaks to every one quite gently. ... I bear the mis-
fortune quite calmly and am only worried about the
King. . . . They have told me how we are to treat the
new Dauphin, the former Due de Bourgogne. He is not
to be simply Monseigneur, as his father was, but in speak-
ing to him he is to be called Monsieur, and in speaking
of him Monsieur le Dauphin. But in writing he is to
be addressed as Monseigneur. . . . All Paris and the
provinces are in despair over this death. It must have
been a truly horrible poison that killed the poor man,
for I was told yesterday that as he died a black fume was
seen to come out of his mouth, from which his whole
face turned and remained pitchy black."
The Dauphin's putrid corpse was hurried away to St.
Denis with what many considered unseemly haste. Baron
de Breteuil, one of the King's household, assures us that
the workman who made the coffin, finding it too narrow,
knelt on the Dauphin's stomach and worked the body
into place with his knees. Eventually, indeed, two great
ceremonies were held, one in St. Denis and one in Notre
Dame de Paris.
Before a year was over another great blow fell on the
court. This time it was the Duchesse de Bourgogne.
"We are here in great grief," writes Madame, "for
night before last the poor Dauphiness died. I cannot
look at the King without tears coming into my eyes.
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 187
She was his sole companion and pleasure. . . . One
can truly say that, save for Madame de Maintenon, the
King loses all he has loved most in this world. With
the Dauphiness all his joy and delight are gone."
Of the new Dauphin Madame writes, "He is young,
he will marry again." But she was mistaken. He
loved his wife with a love such as the walls of Versailles
had never witnessed — certainly not between those who
were joined in wedlock. He was ill himself when his
wife died, but he rose from his bed, dressed without the
aid of his valet, threw a great cloak over him, left his
apartment by a back door, crossed the basement and
the cour de marbre with his head down and his face con-
cealed in his cloak, entered a coach, and was driven to
Marly, where he shut himself in his room. The King
came and was admitted, but it was too painful, and he
soon left; then the courtiers came and filed past as he
sat in an arm-chair by the side of his bed. Not a word
was spoken ; all merely bowed their heads. Within a
week he followed his wife to the grave. His illness was
measles, but at the last he was seized with a fit of mad-
ness, and it took eight men to hold him down. Then
his mind cleared, and he passed away in a sort of religious
ecstacy.
Madame writes on the day of his death: "I thought
to write your Grace of nothing sadder than the mourn-
ful rite we had to perform yesterday at Versailles. But
188 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
we are overwhelmed by yet a new calamity; for the
good Dauphin has followed his wife and died this morn-
ing at half-past eight. . . . The Dauphin surely died of
grief. . . . They opened the good man and found him
perfectly decayed, the heart withered and flat; hence
they judged that he had died of grief. The loss has
infinitely affected his Majesty. . . . The sadness that
reigns here is indescribable. ... I really believe that
all of us here are about to die off one by one."
The Dauphin left two sons. When the governess of
the elder one called him Monsieur le Dauphin, — it is
Madame who relates it, — "he shuddered and looked at
her pitifully; 'Mamma/ for so he called her, 'don't give
me that name, it is too sad.'" Within a week the little
fellow and his brother were down with the measles; a
fortnight later the third Dauphin was dead. Madame
was always sure that he, as well as his mother, was a
victim of the doctors' unalterable faith in bleeding. The
Duchesse de Ventadour, governess of the last little
Bourbon prince to remain alive, had been one of Ma-
dame's ladies and had imbibed her antipathy to bleeding.
Madame writes: " Yesterday, because the child had a
high fever, they wanted to bleed him too; but Madame
de Ventadour and the Prince's sous gouvernante, Madame
de Villefort, opposed the doctors strongly and would
not permit it at all. All they did was to keep him nice
and warm. This one, thank God, to the shame of the
The King's Balcony
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 189
doctors, has been saved. He would surely have died
had the doctors been allowed to have their way." It
was found later that the high fever had come from
cutting a tooth.
Madame writes in connection with these deaths that
the King's grief is so great it makes her tremble; that
her heart aches at seeing his efforts to force back the
pain; that against his will the tears come to his eyes,
and one can see that he is suffering inwardly. There
was no longer any barrier between them ; she was ad-
mitted freely to the "holy of holies" and did her best
to keep him from thinking of sad things. "We talk a
great deal of the past," she writes, "but no word about
the present nor of war or peace ; nor do we speak of the
three Dauphins or the Dauphiness. If he begins about
it, I suddenly talk of something else, as though I had
not heard. ... I burst out with all sorts of trifles;
but it is hard to bring up anything diverting when
calamity follows so fast on calamity. Sometimes I
really do force a smile."
Madame even softens toward Madame de Maintenon for
a moment : "Although the old woman is our worst enemy,
yet for the King's sake I wish her a long life. Things
would be ten times worse were the King to die now. He
loves the woman so terribly much that he would certainly
follow her to the grave ; so I hope she may still live a
great many years."
190 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Madame has her own sorrows at this time that were
worse, she says herself, than all the deaths in the royal
family, and soon she becomes convinced that Madame
de Maintenon is largely responsible for them.
Persistent rumors are spread that Madame's son Philip
has poisoned all the Dauphins. She writes that his ene-
mies "try to make him odious in Paris and at court and
spread the cry of poison. . . . No one dies at court but
what they lay it to him." The King stood by Philip, but
in the latter's own interest, ordered an investigation and
decided that Philip's chemist, Homberg, who was sup-
posed to have provided him with the mysterious poisons,
should be sent to the Bastile. Before he even reached
there the case was dropped, for the doctors had reported
that there was no trace of poison in the corpses. Madame
writes in May, 1715, "My son was not content with prov-
ing his innocence, but he has had all the evidence placed
before the parlement to be preserved there."
Madame had written some years previously: "In the
Palais Royal my son has fitted up a whole apartment under
the grand apartment as a laboratory. His delight, too, is to
melt metals with the burning glass. I imagine this keeps
him in Paris as often as his brown lady-love. When he
comes from his laboratory, he does not look badly at
all. There is a Saxon, born in India, who makes ex-
periments with him. He is very intelligent ; his name is
Homberg."
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 191
Coupled with the charge of poisoning was an almost
worse one, that of incest. Madame writes: "Your Grace
can well imagine that it is not pleasant for me to know
that they put up placards on the Palais Royal with:
' Here is where the lotteries take place and where one finds
the best poison.' The 'lotteries' means that my son
lives with his daughter as Lot did. . . . We know, alas,
that he says wrong things when he has been drinking,
but what they wrote to Germany about him he certainly
did not say. What he did say was not very suitable,
either; for when asked at table why he loved his eldest
daughter [the Duchesse de Berry] better than all his other
children, they say he answered that it was because she
was the only one of his wife's children of whom he could
be sure that it was his own daughter. That is, indeed,
an impertinent way of speaking." Madame writes else-
where that her son "has eaten like a wolf with his daughter
and drunk still more, as unfortunately always happens
there"; and again, with regard to Madame de Berry and
her sister, that "in the matter of drink alone it would kill
any ten men who tried to imitate them."
The King rallied from the blows of every kind that had
fallen upon him. He followed the hunt, driving his own
four horses. One of these fell over a precipice at Fontaine-
bleau, but he was able to control the other three. Under
the regime of Madame de Berry, who was now first lady,
the court even unfolded unheard-of magnificence, the balls
192 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
at Versailles lasting sometimes until eight in the morning.
She instituted what we should call coach parades, as
many as a hundred coaches making the tour of the grand
canal at Fontainebleau. Of her own caleche the wheels,
the dash-board, and the harness blazed with gold. Her
rich dress was covered with diamonds, rubies, and em-
eralds, while her head is described as literally too dazzling
to behold. "Even imagination could go no further/ 1
writes the Mercure de France, in connection with all this
magnificence.
The Due de Berry showed himself less able to fill
his position than was the case with his wife. On a
formal occasion, his renunciation of the crown of Spain
which was one of the conditions of the Utrecht peace,
he covered himself with confusion by rising to deliver
a speech which Saint-Simon had written for him, but
of which he was unable to utter more than the opening
" Monsieur." This he repeated several times, his air of
distress exciting general compassion. It had to be taken
for granted, finally, that the speech had been made.
He seems to have been of a too nervous disposition and
distinguished himself once, while hunting, by putting
a charge of shot into the eye of Monsieur le Due. The
lead could not be extracted, we are told; the wound
swelled, and all that the doctors could do was to bleed
the patient three times and talk of dissolving the eye,
which finally went out of itself. It was rash to hunt
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with the Due de Berry ; pensions were being paid to five
persons whom he had accidentally crippled.
The Due de Berry's death in 1714 added one more to
the tragedies in the royal house. He had given himself
an internal injury while suddenly pulling up his horse,
and the bleedings that the doctors gave him did not im-
prove matters. "We have here our Due de Berry horribly
and dangerously ill," writes Madame, on May 4, ". . .
I have just come from his Grace's room; they have bled
him again for the eighth time. ... I fear more than I
can say that it will turn out badly." And again, after
two days: "I prophesied only too truly ... for the
poor man died Friday at four in the morning. . . . The
King himself brought the holy sacrament; we were all
at this sad ceremony, which lasted three-quarters of an
hour. One cannot conceive of anything more sad. It
is heart-rending." But all the same she writes soon
after, "Had the Due de Berry continued to love me, noth-
ing could have consoled me for his death; but since he
had changed towards me so much that I am sure if I
had died, he would only have laughed, I too have consoled
myself."
Seeing the fate of France dependent on one feeble life,
Louis had his sons by Madame de Montespan declared
next in succession to the throne !
If the fetes ceased, the ceremonies continued and Madame
was now much in evidence. It was she who, when the son
194 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
of the Elector of Saxony came to France in 1714, for-
mally presented him to the King. The Duchesse de Berry
in her widow's weeds of black and ermine stood by, and
the occasion was considered of sufficient importance for one
of the court painters to paint the scene.
Madame herself writes : " They rendered my speech
wrong, for I never in my life called the King 'sire,' but
'sir.' The enf ants de France never call the King ' sire ' ;
that begins with the petits enfants. What I did say to
the King was, 'Sir, here is the Electoral Prince of Saxony
who wishes me to present him to your Majesty.' The
Prince stepped up with a right lofty and good mien and
paid his respects to the King without the least embarrass-
ment. By this he at once gained the approval of the
King and of the whole court, and the King answered him
very politely." The King, furthermore, presented him
with a jewelled sword, the chief diamond on which alone
was worth 10,000 thalers.
In June, 1714, Madame's aunt, the Electress Sophia,
was struck down by apoplexy and died almost imme-
diately. Madame was more affected by this death than
by any of the tragedies that had taken place in France.
" Through her gracious letters," she writes, "this dear
Electress relieved me of many a sorrow and sadness of
heart that had fallen on me in this land. . . . The tears
will cease, but my inward pain and grief will endure to
the end. I forget, dear Louisa, if I wrote you how I
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 195
heard of this misfortune, and how they caused it to be
announced to me through my father confessor. A
trembling came over me, as when one has a chill with a
high fever. I grew pale, too, as death. I was a good quar-
ter of an hour without weeping ; but my breath failed me,
and I seemed to be suffocating. Then the tears came
in floods and lasted day and night. . . . You are right
in saying that this awful news has pierced me through
heart and soul."
But she has to continue to take part in the doings of
the court. "What I endure day and night," she writes,
"is impossible for me to describe; and I have the added
torture of having to control myself; for the King can-
not endure sad faces."
In August Madame writes to her half-sister : "I imagine
you will already have heard that Queen Anne has had a
stroke. They think here that she is dead. It made me
think anew of our dear dead Electress. Had she lived
three months longer she would have died a queen. What
strange things happen in the world !"
Madame was not pleased by the attitude towards her-
self of the new King of England, though just what her
grievance was is not clear. She writes in January, 1715:
"I must confess the King of England makes me impatient
when he shows so little consideration for his late mother,
as to treat those whom she loved and who are so nearly
related to him with such scorn. I, too, am of the number.
196 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
... I don't know whence the scorn comes, for were I
a Protestant, he could not have been king. For I was
nearer to the crown than he, and it is only through my
family and his dear dead mother's that he is King. . . .
But I see plainly that he wishes to have nothing to do
with me, so one must console oneself for this misfor-
tune."
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To return to the ceremonies at the French court,
a most extraordinary one took place early in 1715. It
was the reception of a Persian ambassador who came to
lay at the King's feet the homage of the Orient.
On the day of the reception the King first stood on his
balcony and watched the entry of the envoy into the
court-yard of the palace, then returned, crossed the (Eil
de boeuf, and proceeded down the Galerie des glaces, along
one whole side of which sat brilliantly attired ladies.
Seeing that they showed great eagerness to scrutinize
his magnificent costume, — the coat was of black and gold,
and around his neck hung the cordon bleu with all the
jewels of the crown, — he had the politeness, we are told,
to walk slowly and to pass very close to the ladies, indeed.
At the end of the Galerie was his throne, around which
were grouped Madame, the Duchesse de Berry, the prin-
cesses, and all their ladies. On his right he placed the
tiny Dauphin ; the latter was kept from running away by
the Duchesse de Ventadour, who held his leading-strings ;
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he, too, gleamed all over with precious stones. Madame's
son was on the King's left. At the King's feet was the
painter Coypel, who had been ordered to immortalize
the scene.
Madame describes the ambassador as "the craziest
person you could possibly imagine," and as bran-
dishing his sword and threatening to kill every one
when a suggestion was made that he did not like. He
eventually distinguished himself by abducting a French-
man's wife. She was put in a box, which was provided
with air-holes, and was sent off with the rest of his lug-
gage.
Saint-Simon maintains that the whole embassy from
Persia was a trick arranged by the King's ministers
to give pleasure to their senile master. At all events it
was the latter's last glimpse of glory.
He dismissed the envoy with gifts of great value —
diamonds, emeralds, clocks, watches, guns, pistols, and
tapestries — and then took to his bed, never to rise from
it again. He died of a sort of spreading gangrene; for
a time it was confined to his leg, and the doctors hoped it
would not pass the garter mark. He himself had no
illusions, but spoke of the time "when I was King," and
thanked God for making him a descendant of St. Louis
and giving him so long a reign. He had a most touching
last interview with Madame, telling her he had always
loved her more than she could possibly imagine, and
198 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
that he was sorry for all the pain he had caused her.
"He said farewell to me with such tender words,"
she writes, "that I am still astonished myself that
I did not faint dead away." She threw herself on
her knees at his bedside, and he gave her a fond
embrace.
After the King's case was regarded as hopeless, a quack
was admitted who promised to cure him with a certain
elixir. One day there was wild rejoicing because the King
had evidently gained in strength. There was talk of
throwing the regular physicians into the Seine. Then
the gangrene passed the garter mark, and the leg, we are
told, "was as rotted as though the King had been dead for
six months." He said nothing to those around him, but
muttered frequently : "My God, have pity on me ! Why,
Lord, dost Thou not take me? I am ready to appear
before Thee!" Once he swooned, was considered dead,
and Madame de Maintenon hastily fled the palace forever
— a day too soon. He revived, but was like a piece of
mechanism out of order. To make him take food his
jaws were opened by force; his hands had to be held to
prevent their aimlessly beating the air. In the evening
came a last surprise. While the almoners were chanting
the prayer for those in agony the last live chord of mem-
ory was touched, and the King, merely from habit, broke
out with the Ave. Maria and the Credo in tones more re-
sounding than those of the priests themselves. The next
The Persian Envoy
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 199
morning the King's life ended, quietly and peacefully as
a flame flickers and goes out. Then Madame's son drew
the princes of the blood around him, fell on his knees
before the little Dauphin, calling him "Sire" and "Maj-
esty" and kissing his hand. Then a high official, putting
on a helm with black plumes, stepped on to the balcony
and cried three times to the surging crowd, Le Roi est
mort! Then changing his helm to one with white plumes,
he cried three times more, Vive le Roi !
Madame at this time, besides her grief for the King,
has a secret sorrow, too terrible, she writes, for her to
intrust to paper. "The blood they took from me to-day
is but melancholy blood," she writes to her half-sister;
"if you knew the details, you would wonder that I can
live. To one so virtuous as you, dear Louisa, it cannot
be written by post. If you knew all, your hair would
stand up on end ! " And again, in answer to rumors (about
what she does not say): "Would God I could have
assured her positively that it was not true ! Perhaps we
don't exactly understand each other. What I mean is
no habit, for passions are stronger than habits, and also
cause more disaster. But it makes one's life bitter and
wearisome ! "
The funerals of each and all of these poor royalties whom
we have seen die were celebrated, of course, with the great-
est pomp. As a rule the body was soon removed from
the palace; but if the master of ceremonies, Sainctot,
200 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
can be believed, a wax figure was then placed in the bed
and served with food and drink for forty days.
The portion of the palace occupied by the defunct would
be hung with cloth and velvet in the most complete
manner imaginable, the ceilings, the walls, the windows,
and doors, and even the steps, being covered entirely.
Day and night priests chanted dirges or said mass, —
as many as sixty masses being said in a day. All the
great people, in immensely long black trailing garments,
made solemn visits to sprinkle the body with holy water.
The King's own train, when in formal mourning, was
four and a half feet long, and the crepe on his hat hung
down as far as the ground. He put on black for his family,
but violet for foreign rulers.
Out of respect for a vow made by Anne of Austria in
1662 when she founded Val de Grace, the heart of a French
royal personage was cut out of the body, placed in a silver
box, and carried to that convent at dead of night. Ma-
dame de Montespan, having tortured the Queen's heart
during her lifetime, rode to Paris in the coach with it
after her death. Madame writes in 1714 that she cannot
bear to go near Val de Grace: "For opposite their choir
is a chapel in which are the hearts of Monsieur, of my
eldest son, of the Queen, the Dauphiness, and the three
Dauphins, as well as of the Due de Berry. They are en-
closed in silver hearts; over them hangs a black veil
and a crown over the veil. The sight is to me absolutely
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 201
unendurable. I should weep myself ill. So I am very care-
ful not to go to this convent."
The body itself was taken to St. Denis. The pro-
cessions were begun at night by the light of thou-
sands of torches and to the sound of slow-beating drums.
But they might last for ten or twelve hours. The pall
was of cloth of gold bordered with ermine, and on the
cloth of gold was a cross of cloth of silver, while above
rested a crown of gold. The horses that drew the coaches
were caparisoned with black velvet falling to the ground,
and the livery of the coachmen was of the same.
Arrived at the church of St. Denis, the body was de-
posited in a receiving vault, richly decorated, but with
emblems of death everywhere. It was guarded by the
officers of the household day and night.
After forty days came the funeral itself in the nave
of the church where a great catafalque was erected. In
the case of the first Dauphiness this was on an estrade
to which one ascended by nine steps. Above was a dome
help up by eight columns and lighted with a circle of lamps.
On each of the steps were gorgeous candelabra of silver,
containing numberless wax candles. Between the pairs
of columns were gigantic figures of the four cardinal vir-
tues, while attached to the ceiling above the dome were
a superb banner and four great black streamers lined with
ermine, their ends being caught up. All around the
church were skulls and crossbones illumined by tapers.
202 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
In the case of Louis XIV there were great cartoons
representing his splendid deeds. The services lasted
all the way from four to seven hours, and the whole
proceedings, both those that were premeditated and
sometimes those that were not so, were extraordinary
enough. We have a detailed description by Saint-Simon
of the funeral of the first Dauphiness. The court did
not arrive until the whole assembly had been seated and
all the candles lighted. Then twenty-four ringers be-
gan to clang the bells; both sides of the great doors
were thrown open, and Madame, as first lady, escorted
by the Due de Bourgogne, entered first. He was on
her left hand because the defunct was a princess ; had it
been a prince, Madame would have been on his left.
The Due de Bourgogne's train was five feet long, but at
the funeral of the first Dauphin the trains of the Due de
Bourgogne, of the Due de Berry, and of Madame's son
were each twelve ells, or thirty-six feet, long and were
carried by distinguished nobles. The bells clanged again
as the clergy, in their most gorgeous robes, filed in. The
court performed in the chancel what we might almost
call a quadrille, making bows of ceremony alone, by twos
and by threes, to the effigy of Louis XIII as the last King
who had died, to the altar, the corpse, and to each of the
principal mourners. The bow of ceremony consisted in
crossing your legs and letting yourself down slowly with-
out bending the head or the body.
The Funeral PROCESSION of Louis XIV
THE TRAGIC ENDING OF AN ERA 203
Madame tells how at the Dauphiness's funeral she, as
first lady, had to hand to the bishop a taper weighted with
gold for the offertory. But then and there, between the
monks of St. Denis and the clergy of the Dauphiness's
household there broke out a fierce fight as to which should
have the gold. "They scuffled and almost hit each other,"
writes Madame, "and broke the taper in three places.
They threw themselves upon the bishop, whose chair
began to totter and made his mitre fall from his head.
Had I stayed there a moment longer, the bishop with all
the monks would have fallen upon me. I descended the
steps in great haste and looked on the battle from a safe
distance. In spite of everything it was so comical that
I could not but laugh, and all who were present did the
same." At the funeral of the third Dauphin there was
a similar fight, just as the coffin was being lowered into
the vault, for the ermine and gold pall.
The last stage in each ceremony for a king or an enfant
de France was the performance for the last time by each
grand officer of the household of his own especial function
and the breaking in two of their wands of office. In
Louis XIV's case the crown, the oriflamme or banner
of France, the mantle, the sceptre, the wand of justice,
the sword, the spurs, the coat of mail, the helmet, the
shield, and the escutcheon were all brought separately
and solemnly laid in the vault. Then again there was the
triple repetition of Le roi est mort! and of the other cry,
204
A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Vive Louis Quinze! In compliance with an old custom
hundreds of birds were liberated as a token of joy at the
accession of the new King. Like liberated birds, too, the
court took their flight from Versailles.
CHAPTER VIII
The Regency
Madame writes from Paris on September 10: "The
whole royal household is scattered like starlings. The
young King drove yesterday to Vincennes, Madame de
Berry to St. Cloud, my son and I here, my son having
first accompanied the King to Vincennes. Where all the
rest have gone to, I do not know."
It was in the Palais Royal that Madame and her son
took up their residence, and she writes that her son has
given her a fine new apartment incomparably superior
to the old one. She detests Paris, however, — mainly,
one would imagine, because she is so frequently inter-
rupted in letter-writing. "I began to write this morn-
ing at half-past ten," she says in this same first letter
from Paris, "but have only been able to write the few
205
206 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
lines you see ; for I have had so abominably many people
that my whole head is turning as though I were drunk.
I hardly know what I am doing or saying. It is a perfect
torture to be here."
A year later she writes: "It is true that here in Paris
there are more hindrances to writing in a day than in a
week at Versailles. Yesterday I had twenty-nine Ger-
man princes, counts, and nobles." And again: "There
come a lot of princes now. My God, how often one is
interrupted !"
In 1718 she writes : "In Paris they give one neither peace
nor rest. . . . One person brings a petition, another
wishes a word said for him ; this one wants an audience,
that one an answer. In short, I am unbearably tormented
there. It is worse than ever. . . . They are very much
surprised that I am not completely charmed with all this
fuss about me; but I must confess it is unendurable."
She is, in fact, a much more important person in Paris
than she had been in Versailles, or at least has more
serious duties to perform. She writes of laying a corner-
stone, at which ceremony she is received with drums,
trumpets, and fifes and with salvos of artillery. She sits
on a raised platform in an arm-chair and with a canopy
— a dais, she calls it — over her, and with her own hand,
smears cement on a stone. "I had to give my blessing,"
she writes; "that made me laugh — it's a fine thing, my
blessing!"
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THE REGENCY 207
Madame remains very conservative amid her new sur-
roundings. "I see many men, but no women," she writes ;
"they will not come to me because I cannot endure people
coming quite bare-necked and in echarpe, like Madame
d'Orleans and Madame de Berry. The young people
do not know what respect means; they never saw a
proper court. I confess these perfectly disorderly man-
ners are horribly displeasing to me. In short, dear Louisa,
everything is quite disgusting, and I wish I were a hun-
dred miles away. ... It began already in our late King's
time. His Majesty said to me: 'How will you manage
in Paris? Unless you put up with the ladies in robe de
chambre, no one will come to you.' I said, 'Sir, I pre-
fer not to have these ladies, rather than see them not
render me my due.' The King said : 'You are quite right,
Madame. I wish Madame d'Orleans felt the same, but
she is too horribly lazy.' So I keep up what had the
King's approval." She declares that the robes battantes
seem to her absolutely insolent and remind her of night-
gowns. She would make no concession, indeed, to any
new fashion and would never wear a panier. Her outer
cloak was still cut on the model of that of the first Dau-
phiness, who had died thirty years before. She was laced
daily into her grand habit and would admit no one not
similarly attired. She felt quite bitter about it ; she hoped
that the ladies might one day be made to pay dearly for
their laziness. There would come a new queen who would
208 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
insist on their always being in grand habit, and this would
be all the harder for them because of their present laxness.
Through her very conservatism Madame grew extremely
popular with the Parisians. She seems to have repre-
sented to them all that was best in that monarchy which
they had adored, but which, by its extravagance and dis-
soluteness, had forfeited much of their respect. She
declares that they are grateful to her for her observance
of old customs and for living according to her station;
that they are wont to curse their own native princes and
princesses, but that on her, when she drives through the
streets, they shower nothing but blessings. "I return
the pleasant feeling," she writes, "and think highly of the
good people." And again: "The French are so accus-
tomed to have women meddle in everything that it
seems to them impossible I do not meddle at all; and
the good Parisians, with whom I am in favor, try to as-
cribe everything that is good to me. I am much obliged
to the poor people for their affection, which I don't in
the least deserve." She does meddle more than she did
formerly, especially in the case of Protestants who had
suffered hardships.
Once Madame found herself in a riot in which many
persons were killed. She kept right on through the crowd,
because, she writes, "in such cases you must never seem
to be afraid"; and no one insulted her. "Had I not
loved them," she writes of the Parisians, "I should never
THE REGENCY 209
have gone to live among them. In this class you really
do find people who are faithful to their wives. A servant
of mine had married one of the ugliest women in the world,
a woman who was broader than she was long, who had a
face like a toad that has been trodden upon, and who
talked exactly like a duck. Yet she has just died, and
the poor man is in absolute despair."
Madame was in the midst of the excitement of the Mis-
sissippi Bubble and frequently talked with John Law. She
has a host of delicious anecdotes about the nouveaux riches,
of which, however, we can give but one specimen. "All
who have won so tremendously in the shares," she writes,
"buy up everything without treating or bargaining.
There are comical stories. The other day when a lady
was at the opera, she saw another lady come in, — very
ugly, but dressed in the finest material in the world and
covered with diamonds. Madame Begon's daughter
turned and said to her mother : 'Mother, look at that lady
all dressed up. It seems to me it is our cook, Marie.'
The mother said, 'Hold your tongue, daughter; it cannot
be.' The daughter repeated, 'Mother, in the name of
God look!' The mother looked at her closely and said,
'I don't know what to think; she does look very much
like her.' Every one in the amphitheatre began to
whisper, 'Marie, the cook!' She stood up and said in a
very loud voice : ' Well, yes ; I am Marie, the cook of
Madame Begon. I have grown rich; I dress on my own
210 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
money; I owe nothing to any one. I like to dress up,
I do dress up. That harms no one. Who has any objec-
tions to make?' You can imagine what a burst of
laughter there was. There are a hundred such stories."
Madame's son one morning increased her own income
by 150,000 livres a year, and he distributed 2,000,000
francs' worth of shares among the officers and chief per-
sons of her household. She is naturally wildly enthu-
siastic about Law. "My son has found an Englishman
named Law," she writes, "who understands the finances
down to the bottom. . . . Those who speak ill of Mon-
sieur Law do it from pure envy; for nothing could be
better. He pays the King's abominable debts and causes
the taxes to be lowered. . . . Wood costs but half
what it did. . . . Monsieur Law is a very polite, good
man; I think a great deal of him. He does me favors
whenever he can. ... I always say the way things
have gone under my son's regency is unprecedented.
One cannot say with Solomon that there is nothing new
under the sun ; for what Monsieur Law is doing is brand
new."
In August, 1719, Madame writes : "In the last six days
nothing has happened except much concerning the fi-
nances, which I cannot tell you about, for I do not under-
stand it. I only know that my son has found means,
together with an Englishman named Monsieur Law, —
but the French call him Monsieur Las, — to pay this year
yfarur C/m LatxQiois J'ur It pthc yont « la Ccu-fHT dCf$
The Funeral Ceremony for the Due and Duchesse de Bourgogne
THE REGENCY 211
all the King's debts, which amount to two hundred thou-
sand million. So the young King from being a very poor
King will become a very rich one."
Madame means 2,000,000,000 francs, which is enough,
to be sure ; and the Regent really did pay them, but with
paper money, the security for which was undeveloped
land along the Mississippi. The exploitation of this was
to be rendered profitable by enormous government grants
and monopolistic franchises. The military commander
of those parts who came to Paris and ventured to
criticise the scheme was clapped into the Bastile. Law
was made Comptroller of the Finances of the kingdom,
and his bank farmed the state revenues.
The Regent spent money like Haroun al Raschid,
and the shares, into which all government bonds were
made convertible, rose to 2000 by leaps and bounds.
Gold, silver, and jewels were eagerly bought as per-
manent investments. The Regent himself bought, for
the crown a great diamond that now bears his name,
but that was originally known as the "millionnaire."
Madame writes, to be sure, that she has seen a finer one
in the hands of a Jew belonging to the King of Poland.
"I mean," she explains, "that the Jew belonged to the
King of Poland, not the diamond."
"It is incredible what appalling riches there now are in
France," Madame writes in December, 1719; "one hears
them talk of nothing but millions." But soon again she
212 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
writes that she does not understand about the shares;
that "at first one gained a great deal with them, but
now one no longer gains so much." Then come edicts of
which she disapproves. People seem to be trying to
invest all their money in gold, silver, jewels, etc., and
not to care for the paper money and shares. Dangeau
writes: "It is said that foreigners have sold jewels here
for more than 100,000,000 francs, and that they are
preparing to have others come that they would sell very
dear." Edicts then forbade the wearing of jewels, the
hoarding of gold, and even the manufacturing of gold
articles of any value. Then came house-to-house visita-
tions in search of gold and silver coin, it having been
declared that the paper of the government bank was good
enough for any one. Saint-Simon writes sarcastically
of the attempt to persuade people that "since Abraham
paid cash down for a field for the burial of Sarah, men had
been in the greatest error regarding money and metals,
that paper alone was useful and necessary." He declares
that a history of the sudden changes of fortune, the in-
credible bargains, the immensity of the gains, the fall of
those thus enriched, the ruin, the incurable wounds in-
flicted on the country, would form the strangest and
most amusing history ever written.
Mississippi shares went down from 2000 to almost
nothing. Madame writes that she has forbidden her
people to speak to her of the accursed things, that they
THE REGENCY 213
are as distasteful to her as a purging : "I don't know what
'rising' or 'falling' means, and I won't learn. . . . Missis-
sippi and I have nothing to do with each other ; I hate it
like the devil. . . . Monsieur Law's system never pleased
me; would God I had been mistaken about it. . . . I
always wished my son not to follow it." Which was not
quite literally true.
England, it will be remembered, was having her own
similar troubles with the great South Sea Bubble. Ma-
dame writes in November, 1720, "God pardon me, but I
must confess that it did not grieve me to hear about the
disorders of the South Sea affair since things had gone
so wrong here."
But her natural sense of humor, which, as we have seen
in the preceding pages, was abnormally developed, will not
permit of her keeping to herself the following anecdote.
It is about the King's physician, Dr. Chirac. He "was
called to see a lady, and while he was in her bedchamber
and in the very act of feeling her pulse, he heard of a further
fall [in the shares]. He could not refrain from moaning,
'Ah, good God! sinking, sinking, sinking!' The poor
sick lady, hearing this, uttered a loud shriek; and as her
people ran to her from all directions: 'Ah/ said she, 'I
shall die ! Monsieur de Chirac has said three times as he
felt my pulse, " Sinking, sinking, sinking !" ' The doctor
recovered himself and said, ' You are dreaming ; your pulse
is quite strong, and you are perfectly well !' "
214 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
But Madame has more serious things to tell, too : of
their finding at one time twenty dead bodies in her fish-
pond at St. Cloud of people who had been murdered for
their money. "This happens almost every night," she
writes, meaning that some one is murdered daily. In July,
1720, she complains that her own purveyors refuse to pro-
vide her with food or her merchants with clothes or stock-
ings because she has no ready money.
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As the years went on death, of course, grew busier and
busier with those who had been at the great King's court.
The exiled Queen of England died in May, 1718. "To-
day I write you with a very sad heart," says Madame, on
May 8, "and I wept yesterday absolutely the whole day.
For yesterday morning at seven o'clock the good, pious,
virtuous Queen of England died at St. Germain. She
must be in heaven, for she did not keep a farthing for her-
self, but gave all to the poor ; she supported whole fami-
lies. She never spoke ill of any one in her life, and if one
wanted to tell her stories about any one, she would say,
'If it is anything bad, please don't tell me; I don't like
stories that attack the reputation.' She bore her mis-
fortunes with the greatest patience in the world, and that
not from foolishness ; for she had much intelligence, was
polite and agreeable, although not handsome. She was
always merry, laughed and chaffed in a perfect manner,
and always praised our Princess of Wales very much.'
The Exiled Queen of England
THE REGENCY 215
On May 29: "I never pass byChaillot without shudder-
ing to think that the virtuous and amiable Queen is lying
up there dead in the choir of the nuns — it will be long
before I get her out of my mind. . . . The Queen died with
hearty joy and publicly thanked God for releasing her from
this life. I am quite of your opinion, dear Louisa, that
the Queen was more of a saint than her late husband. . . .
The Queen had great constancy and right royal qualities,
great nobility, generosity, politeness, an agreeable intelli-
gence, was absolutely always merry, and could banter
very nicely. She always bantered me with my passion for
seeing plays and acknowledged that she had been so her-
self. She never complained, and laughed heartily because
for a time she could not drive out for the reason that her
horses had died, and she had no money to buy others. She
laughed over her royal condition, how magnificent it was,
and how all the grandeur of this world is only vanity.
She knew how to turn that very prettily and without
bitterness."
The " Queen of England" might well banter Madame
about going to plays, for she went to everything that came
along. She could enter the theatre by a private passage
from the Palais Royal. She particularly loved sad plays.
" Iphigenie is a very touching piece," she once wrote; "it
has often made me weep, and if I did not find myself
softened and touched by plays, I should not enjoy them at
all."
216 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Madame de Maintenon died early in 1719 ; Madame had
just closed and sealed a letter when she heard the news;
she wrote in her large firm hand across the cover: "This
morning I learn that the old Maintenon went round the
corner yesterday between four and five in the evening;
what a blessing if this had happened thirty and some years
ago ! " She writes in the same strain in another letter ;
and one sees what, after all these years, she considers the
woman's one unpardonable sin: "I fear that the Mainte-
non's death, like that of the Gorgon Medusa, will produce
many more monsters. Had she died thirty and some
years ago, all the poor Protestants [" reformed," she calls
them] would still be in France, and their church at
Charenton would not be razed to the ground. The 'old
witch,' as the Grand Duchess used to call her, has done
all that with the Jesuit Pere la Chaise. . . . Those two
have done all that."
Very opposite opinions were and still are held about
Madame de Maintenon. Dangeau wrote in his diary in
connection with her death: "She was a woman of such
great merits, who had done so much good and prevented
so much evil in the time of her favor, that one cannot say
too much for her." But Saint-Simon wrote opposite this
passage in his copy of Dangeau: "That is what I call a
flat, dirty, stinking lie in the throat ! This fatal woman
did great harm to France . . . and caused great relief by
her death."
THE REGENCY 217
Madame de Berry, as first lady in France, played some-
thing of a role under the Regency. She was magnificent in
all her doings, even in her devotions. Madame declares
that at the Carmelite convent where Madame de Berry
went into retirement at Easter time she has seen the
nuns perfectly bathed in tears because of the fervor with
which her Grace went to communion. Madame has to add,
however, that her granddaughter's good resolutions sel-
dom last, and that "the devil will come back into the swept
house with seven evil spirits worse than the first." Ma-
dame de Berry surrounded herself with guards, had a
royal canopy placed over her box at the opera, once
walked out on the quay preceded by drummers, and,
once again, received ambassadors on a regular throne.
Her pride and arrogance were the talk of Paris.
In 1719 Madame's daughter came back from Lorraine to
visit her after an absence of twenty years. As the sister
of the Regent of France she was royally received, and by
way of a new and pleasant experience, was even allowed to
pardon a soldier who was just about to be hung at the end
of the Pont Neuf. The Duchesse de Berry outdid herself
in showing her attentions.
The Duchesse de Lorraine found in her room a commode
stuffed with rare fabrics, shawls, and ribbons such as the
King had been wont to dispense. Then Madame de Berry
gave her a fete in her palace, the Luxemburg, that surpassed
anything seen for years. More than a thousand birds
218 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
of various kinds had been slaughtered for the collation,
and each of the two hundred and fifty guests who sat down
to dinner had a separate domestic to fill his or her glass.
The Duchesse de Berry herself was in a robe of gold, and
her head-dress glittered all over with diamonds. After the
collation the brilliantly lighted palace was practically
thrown open to the public, for any one properly dressed
and masked might enter. It was a Belshazzar's feast, for
the Duchesse de Berry was taken ill not so very long after.
Madame tells us she has been to see her, that she is suf-
fering " like a damned soul " and has no rest day or night ;
"they call Madame de Berry's illness gouty rheumatism."
Madame unbends enough to say of the daughter-in-law
she has all these years so bitterly detested, "I am sorry for
the mother, too." And she actually said of poor Madame
d'Orleans one day, "To tell the truth, she is very humble
towards me, and we get on very well together."
Madame de Berry's end was most edifying. Madame
writes: "She said yesterday she was glad to die because
she had made her peace with God, and should she live
*
longer, she might sin again. She preferred to die. This
touched us all unutterably. She really is a good creature.
Had her mother taken pains to bring her up better, she
would have turned out absolutely well. I confess her loss
goes straight to my heart and saddens my soul."
She gives horrible details of what the doctors found
when they "opened ".Madame de Berry : "Her spleen was
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In 1722 Madame had a serious accident. She had, as
we know, always dreaded doctors and hated bleeding. "I
like doctors who are careful with their patients, and try
to follow nature," she had written in 1709; "to-morrow
a new doctor is to take his oath of allegiance to me, a
young man of forty-two. This is the fourth doctor I
have had since I have been in France, and he will prob-
ably be the end of me because I am nearly fifteen years
older than he." And again, prophetically as it turned
out: "If our hour has not struck, the physicians will
show skill ; but if it has come, they will be blinded and
do the contrary to what will help." She tells of her
cousin, the Due de Tremouille : "I am persuaded that
he is dying, not from his lung trouble, but of the nine
bleedings they have given him in two days." And
again, a few days later: "The doctors bled him, the
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THE REGENCY 229
Due de Tremouille, ten times, so frightfully that when they
opened him, they found no other cause of death in him save
that he had not a single drop of blood left in his veins."
Madame had long resisted, but at last had been in-
duced to let them bleed her at intervals, because, as she
tells us, if she did not, those who had bought posts in
her household sat round in despair for fear she should
die, and they lose their investment. She was not ill,
but the doctors had told her that one really must be
bled in May in order to remain healthy for the rest of
the year. Her barber, she writes, was a good blood-
letter, and had bled her before. But now as he was
drawing the second plateful he suddenly began to look
like grim death, tottered, and fell down in a swoon. He
recovered enough to bind her arm, but did it so badly
that she lost quantities of blood. She fell asleep, but
on waking, knocked her arm against the table. The vein
opened, and she lost a plateful more.
She wrote after this that she would have nothing
more to do with the " French tricks" of blood letting and
purging, that they did not suit a Rauschenblattknechtchen
at all: "I have said farewell to all these works of the
devil." But it was too late. There followed a time of
fearful weakness; she is "tired as a poor dog," she
writes. When she tries to kneel in chapel, she has not*
strength to do it : "Even to walk the length of the room
makes me snort as if I had been chasing a hare."
230 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Yet the King's coronation was coming. She was once
more, since the Duchesse de Berry's death, the first
lady in France. She was the only representative in the
royal family of the real old regime. She declared that
should God prolong her life until the 15th of October,
she meant to travel to Rheims. She took the greatest
interest in the preparations. They brought the crown
and showed it to her, and she went into ecstasies over
it. She considered it "the most beautiful, splendid, and
magnificent thing in the whole world." From a gorgeous
setting of pearls and topazes, emeralds and rubies shone
forth the Regent diamond, while above was an even
finer one, the great pear-shaped Sancy.
Barbier, the famous chronicler of the reign of Louis
XV, was another person who was given a private view
of the crown. He writes: "A few days ago, through
friends, I saw at Monsieur Rondet's, the King's jeweller,
the crown that has been made for the coronation of
Louis XV. It is the most brilliant thing and the most
perfect piece of work that has ever been seen. It has
eight branches, the lower part forming a fleur-de-lis of
diamonds, and above, all by itself, is a great fleur-de-lis
in the air. The diamond called Sancy, which was the
finest in the time of Louis XIV, forms the top of the
fleur-de-lis, and there are four other large diamonds
which form the leaves. Directly in front is the large
diamond which the Regent bought for the King. It is
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THE REGENCY 231
of surprising size; they call it the 'Millionnaire.' It is
worth three millions [we have a later inventory in which
it was valued at twelve millions]. They say the Grand
Mogul has no larger one. They say, also but I do not
know if it is true, that the man who brought it, not to
be taken by surprise, had his thigh opened, and that
they put it there, encased in lead, and that when he was
here, he had his thigh opened again. It is certainly
larger than a pigeon's egg. At the same time I saw
the coach which the King has had made for his entry
into Rheims, which will also be of great magnificence.
The interior is all upholstered with flowered velvet and
gold Spanish point lace. I also saw the golden nef
which serves at the consecration for the King's dinner,
and in which they put his whole convert. It is a fine
piece of work. Louis XIV had it made more than fifty
years ago for the consecration of kings. It weighs, they
say, a hundred and seven marks. Everything at Rheims
will be of an astonishing magnificence. The troops are
all dressed in new uniforms. There will be about ten
thousand men. Of the lords only those go who have
been appointed, and they will vie with each other in
being magnificently dressed. . . . The King left for
Rheims on the 24th of October. He passed through
Paris, with all his household in new clothes, and very
magnificent ones." An engraving shows him being re-
ceived by the magistrates at Rheims.
232 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Meanwhile, though weaker than ever, Madame had
dragged herself about, and had even driven to Ver-
sailles to see their little Majesties. But she wrote that
it seemed strange to her to see only children instead of
the King whom she had so dearly loved. She stood at
the side of the bed where she had seen him in his last
agony, and where he had shown her so much kindness.
She had the greatest difficulty in the world, she writes,
in keeping back the blinding tears.
She would have stayed in Versailles, but she found her
apartment in ruins, the floor of her hall of guards having
fallen through. So she returned to Paris.
She tells of a touching demonstration in her honor
there. When she went to the opera for the first time
since her illness, she found the auditorium full to over-
flowing. They came and told her it was all for her sake,
as a token of joy at seeing her again. "I am much in
favor with the good Parisians," she wrote the next day
to Louisa; "I am sorry the air is bad for me, or I would
give the good, honest people more chances to see me."
And again, "They do me more honor in Paris than I
deserve."
The going to Rheims meant everything to her. She
had often complained bitterly that there was no longer
any court in France, and had declared that one who
was accustomed to that atmosphere could never live in
any other.
THE REGENCY 233
Now she was like a splendid old war-horse scent-
ing the battle from afar. "I can get to heaven
from Rheims," she writes, "as well as from anywhere
else." She had no dread of the journey. To Monsieur
Harling, the husband of her former governess, she wrote,
remembering the nickname she had been called by as a
little girl, "An old Rauschenblattknecht like me is not
easily frightened." She took a strong elixir, however,
prepared after a secret formula by a Dr. Garus who
was himself too feeble to walk, but who would rise each
morning at three to see that her concoction for the day
was good and fresh. "He is really the best old man in
the world," she writes of Dr. Garus.
Madame reached her destination safely, but her daugh-
ter, who had come to Rheims to meet her with the future
Emperor of the Romans and her other children, was so
horrified at the change in her appearance that she burst
into tears. "I felt sad at her distress," Madame writes;
for she wrote even here. She played her part in the
great ceremony and enjoyed the sight of the clergy and
nobles in their rich robes.
We have an engraving of the ceremony, though the
picture is faint with age. Madame had the most promi-
nent places reserved for herself, her daughter, and her
grandchildren. They were on the right, in the front
row, quite near the altar. The seats were covered with
blue satin with golden fleurs-de-lis. During the cere-
234 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
mony, just after the splendid ermine and velvet robes
had been put on him, the King approached Madame
and made her a special bow in the face of that huge
assembly. "In the whole wide world," Madame writes
from Rheims, "nothing finer can be seen or imagined
than the King's coronation !"
But the nunc dimittis with which the ceremony ended
was her own. "They have reported Madame dead at
Soissons," writes Barbier, "but that is not true." But
very soon afterwards he writes, "Madame has fallen ill;
she has dropsy of the chest."
As a matter of fact, Madame returned from Rheims
not much the worse for her journey, but the doctors
saw fit to administer great doses of what she calls
"green juice." "I am convinced,"' she writes, "that
they have purged my soul out of my body." They had
purged the poor woman eighty times in a single week !
Her letters grow sadder and sadder. It was autumn
as she lay on her death-bed, and she had always dreaded
autumn. "I love only spring and summer," she had
written in the previous year; "autumn I cannot endure.
I hate it worse than winter itself ; it is like one continual
death struggle." And again, still later: "I don't think
much of autumn days; it is only a beautiful agony in
which one sees everything die; and there can be noth-
ing pleasant in that."
Her last letter is dated only five days before her death.
Befokk thk Cathedral at Khkims
THE REGENCY 235
" Thank God, I am prepared to die," she writes, "and I
only pray for strength to die bravely. It is not bad
weather, although to-day a fine rain is setting in. But
I do not think any weather will help me. Many com-
plain of coughs and colds, but my malady lies deeper.
Should I recover, you will find me the same friend as
ever. Should this be the end, I die with full faith in my
Redeemer."
Well might Saint-Simon say of Madame, "She was
capable of tender and inviolable friendship." She had
not seen the correspondent to whom she wrote these
last lines for fifty-two years, but had long written to her
by every mail.
Matthew Marais writes under date of December 4,
1722: "Madame, the Regent's mother, is very ill and
has been so ever since the consecration. They can do
nothing for her. Quack doctors are coming from every-
where and promising a great deal. But she tells every
one they are charlatans, and that she is going to die.
She has much courage and strength of mind. She saw
her Lorraine family at Rheims and did not trouble about
the journey, saying that one could die perfectly well
anywhere. The Regent always loved and respected her.
She asked her son: 'Why do you weep? Must one not
die?' To a lady of her court who wished to kiss her
hand she said, 'You may kiss my lips; I am going to a
land where all are equal/"
236 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
Under the date December 8 Marais writes: "This
night, at three in the morning, Madame died at St.
Cloud. All Europe will be in mourning — not only court
but family mourning. She is the great-grandmother of
the King, or at least the wife and widow of his great-
grandfather. This is through the Duchesse de Savoie,
who was daughter of Monsieur by a first marriage; and
her daughter was the Duchesse de Bourgogne, the mother
of the King. She, Madame, is also his great-aunt.
Spain, Lorraine, Savoy, England (through Hanover),
the Palatine Elector, and all the courts of Germany —
all are connected with her. There will be grand and
complete mourning for six whole months. She was in
her seventy-first year. The King gains thereby a pen-
sion of more than 50,000 crowns, and the appanage of
Montargis which she enjoyed falls back to the Regent.
We lose a good princess, a thing which is rare."
At the depositing of the body in St. Denis, and again at
the service held forty days later, incidents happened which
would have made Madame herself laugh heartily had she
been alive; and we may be sure that her sympathies
would not have been with the ducal pretensions. " I once
had a comical dispute with the poor Archbishop of Rheims,"
she had written in 1710; "he was, as your Grace knows,
the first duke and peer. He once said to me, as we were
walking together in the valley at St. Germain, ' It seems
to me, Madame, that you don't think much of us French
THE REGENCY 237
dukes, and that you greatly prefer your German princes.'
I answered dryly and sharply, 'That is true.' 'But if
you won't compare us to them,' he said, 'to what will you
compare us?' I answered, 'Turkish viziers and pachas.'
' Why ? ' he asked. ' Like them,' I said, ' you have all the dig-
nities, and no better birth. As the Grand Seigneur makes
pachas and viziers, so the King makes you what you are.
It is only God and their fathers and mothers who make our
German princes, so you cannot compare with them. You
are subjects, and they are free.' I thought the good man
would jump out of his skin, he was so angry. But he
had no answer at all ready." And again, earlier, she had
written: "The arrogance of the dukes is going too far;
they wish to be above all princes. A German prince of a
really good house would go wild if he were to come here
and have to have disputes every day with the vermin."
And still again: "I once gave one of these dukes a good
lesson. He placed himself at the King's table ahead of the
Prince of Deux Ponts. I said out loud, 'How does it come
that the Due de Saint-Simon gets so close to the Prince of
Deux Ponts ; does he want to ask him to take one of his
sons as a page ? ' Every one began to laugh so that he had
to go away."
After this, one can better appreciate what Matthew
Marais writes : "At the obsequies of Madame in St. Denis
there was a great discussion between Mademoiselle de
Charolais [daughter of a prince of the blood], who was
238 A LADY OF THE OLD REGIME
doing the honors, and the Duchesse d'Humieres, who ac-
companied her. The Duchess wished to walk at her side ;
the Princess took two equerries on her right and on her
left, and thus prevented the Duchess from approaching.
When it came to kneeling, the Duchess put her square in
the same line as the Princess, who asked her in a very
loud tone did she wish to place herself ahead of her. She
answered that she was placing herself at her side, where it
was her privilege to be. They called Monsieur de Dreux,
master of ceremonies [all this while poor Madame's body
was about to descend into the vault], who said that that
was the rule. The Princess was not at all satisfied. On
her return she wrote a very emphatic letter to the Regent
about the prestige the royal house was losing and about
the usurpations of the dukes. The Comte de Charolais
said that if any duke should come to his house, he would
throw him out of the window. They talk of nothing less
than taking away all the honors from the dukes, the King
having the power to do so. The Due de Saint-Simon, be-
cause of this incident, did not come to the Louvre to pay
his respects on the death of Madame. "
The Duchesse d'Humieres, at the command of the King,
finally made excuses to Mademoiselle de Charolais, but in
an assez legere manner. Even then Madame was not to be
disposed of without more trouble.
Marais heads his entries on February 5, 1723, with " Ser-
vice for Madame at St. Denis. Dispute with the Bishops."
I
Thk Coronation Cekkmony
THE REGENCY 239
"The service for Madame," he writes, "was performed in
St. Denis. The princesses, who had been at the ball in the
night, did not arrive until very late. Mass did not begin
until after a quarter past twelve ; a disturbance arose be-
cause the officiating priest and the bishops maintained
that the grand master of ceremonies had absented him-
self on purpose. The grand master had not wished to go
there, and he had suddenly disappeared. The bishops
had only the master of ceremonies of the abbey, and they
were so angry about it that they were not willing to dine
at the table that had been prepared for them, and they
all returned to Paris to dine. The Bishop of Clermont,
known as Pere Masillon, gave the funeral oration, . which
no one heard; he had been preparing himself since six
in the morning; he did not get into the pulpit until two
o'clock, and he had no voice left. His oration seemed
long and as flat as the sword of Charlemagne."
Poor Madame did finally get buried, but she was not
to rest long, for, as is well known, the tombs of the
Bourbon royalties were sacked during the Revolution,
and their bones were taken out and kicked about.
Probably none of these vandals had ever so much as heard
of the kindly but sharp old lady who was once the idol of
the Parisians and the terror of presuming courtiers.
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