Memoirs of Madame la Marquise de Montespan Part 34

Soon there was not the slightest doubt left to me; and I knew, as did the whole Court, that he openly visited the Marquise, and was glad to pa.s.s some moments there.

These things, in truth, never lacked some plausible pretext, and he chose the time when Madame de Montchevreuil and Mademoiselle de Nantes were presenting their homages to Madame de Maintenon.

CHAPTER XIII.

Marie Louise, Daughter of Henrietta of England, Betrothed to the King of Spain.--Her Affliction.--Jealousy of the King, Her Husband.

The unfortunate lady, Henrietta of England, had left, at her death, two extremely young girls, one of them, indeed, being still in the cradle.

The new Madame was seized with good-will for these two orphans to such an extent as to complain to the King. They were brought up with the greatest care; they were, both of them, pretty and charming.

The elder was named Marie Louise. It was this one whom Monsieur destined in his own mind for Monseigneur le Dauphin; and the Princess, accustomed early to this prospect, had insensibly adapted to it her mind and hope.

Young, beautiful, agreeable, and charming as her mother, she created already the keenest sensation at Court, and the King felt an inclination to cherish her as much as he had loved Madame. But the excessive freedom which this alliance would not have failed to give his brother, both with his son-in-law and nephew, and with the Ministry, prevented his Majesty from giving way to this penchunt for Marie Louise. On the contrary, he consented to her marriage with the King of Spain, and the news of it was accordingly carried to Monsieur le Duc d'Orleans. He and his wife felt much annoyance at it. But after communications of that kind there was scarcely any course open to be taken than that of acquiescence. Monsieur conveyed the news to his beloved daughter, and, on hearing that she was to be made Queen of Spain, this amiable child uttered loud lamentations.

When she went to Versailles to thank the King, her uncle, her fine eyes were still suffused with tears. The few words which she uttered were mingled with sighing and weeping; and when she saw the indifference of her cousin, who felicitated her like the rest, she almost fainted with grief and regret.

"My dear cousin," said this dull-witted young lord, "I shall count the hours until you go to Spain. You will send me some 'touru', for I am very fond of it?"

The King could not but find this reflection of his son very silly and out of place. But intelligence is neither to be given nor communicated by example. His Majesty had to support to the end this son, legitimate as much as you like, but altogether in degree, and with a person which formed a perpetual contrast with the person of the King. It was my Duc du Maine who should have been in the eminent position of Monseigneur.

Nature willed it so. She had proved it sufficiently by lavis.h.i.+ng all her favours on him, all her graces; but the laws of convention and usage would not have it. His Majesty has made this same reflection, groaning, more than once.

Marie Louise, having been married by proxy, in the great Chapel of Saint Germain, where the Cardinal de Bouillon blessed the ring in his quality of Grand Almoner of France, left for that Spain which her young heart distrusted.

Her beauty and charms rendered her precious to the monarch, utterly melancholy and devout as he was. He did not delay subjecting her to the wretched, petty, tiresome, and absurd etiquette of that Gothic Court.

Mademoiselle submitted to all these nothings, seeing she had been able to submit to separation from France. She condemned herself to the most fastidious observances and the most sore privations, which did not much ameliorate her lot.

A young Castilian lord, almost mad himself, thought fit to find this Queen pretty, and publicly testify his love for her. The jealousy of the religious King flared up like a funeral torch. He conceived a hatred of his wife, reserved and innocent though she was. She died cruelly by poison. And Monseigneur le Dauphin probably cried, after his manner:

"What a great pity! She won't send me the touru!"

CHAPTER XIV.

The Dauphine of Bavaria.--The Confessor with Spurs.--Madame de Maintenon Disputes with Bossuet.--He Opposes to Her Past Ages and History.--The Military Absolution.

Eight months after the wedding of Marie Louise, we witnessed the arrival of Anne Marie Christine, Princess of Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Ferdinand. The King and Monseigneur went to receive her at Vitry-le-Francais, and then escorted her to Chalons, where the Queen was awaiting her.

The Cardinal de Bouillon celebrated the marriage in the cathedral church of this third-cla.s.s town. The festivities and jubilations there lasted a week.

The King had been very willing to charge me with the arrangement of the baskets of presents destined for the Dauphine; I acquitted myself of this commission with French taste and a sentiment of what was proper. When the Queen saw all these magnificent gifts placed and spread out in a gallery, she cried out, and said:

"Things were not done so n.o.bly for me; and yet, I can say without vanity, I was of a better house than she."

This remark paints the Queen, Maria Theresa, better than anything which could be said. Can one wonder, after that, that she should have brought into the world an hereditary prince who so keenly loves 'touru', and asks for it!

Madame de Maintenon and M. Bossuet had gone to receive the Princess of Schelestadt. When she was on her husband's territory, and it was necessary, to confess her for the sacrament of matrimony, she was strangely embarra.s.sed. They had not remembered to bring a chaplain of her own nation for her; and she could not confess except in the German tongue.

Madame de Maintenon, who is skilled in all matters of religion, said to the prelate: "I really think, monsieur, that, having educated Monsieur le Dauphin, you ought to know a little German,--you who have composed the treatise on universal history."

The Bishop of Meaux excused himself, saying that he knew Greek, Syriac, and even Hebrew; but that, through a fatality, he was ignorant of the German language. A trumpeter was then sent out to ask if there was not in the country a Catholic priest who was a German, or acquainted with the German tongue. Luckily one was found, and Madame de Maintenon, who is very, pedantic, even in the matter of toilet and ornaments, trembled with joy and thanked G.o.d for it. But what was her astonishment when they came to bring her the priest! He was in coloured clothes, a silk doublet, flowing peruke, and boots and spurs. The lady in waiting rated him severely, and was tempted to send him back. But Bossuet--a far greater casuist than she--decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much less to forms. They were contented with taking away the spurs from this amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,--the curtain of which he was careful to draw before himself,--and they brought the Bavarian Princess, who, not knowing the circ.u.mstances, confessed the sins of her whole life to this sort of soldier.

Madame de Maintenon always had this general confession on her conscience; she scolded Bossuet for it as a sort of sacrilege, and the latter, who was only difficult and particular with simple folk, quoted historical examples in which soldiers, on the eve of battle, had confessed to their general.

"Yes," said the King, on hearing these quotations from the imperturbable man; "that must have been to the Bishop of Puy or the Bishop of Orange, who, in effect, donned the s.h.i.+eld and cuira.s.s at the time of the crusades against the Saracens; or perhaps, again, to the Cardinal de la Valette d'Epernon, who commanded our armies under Richelieu successfully."

"No, Sire," replied the Bishop; "to generals who were simply soldiers."

"But," said the King, "were the confessions, then, null?"

"Sire," added the Bishop of Meaux, "circ.u.mstances decide everything. Of old, in the time of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and much later still, confessions of Christians were public,--made in a loud voice; sometimes a number together, and always in the open air. Those of soldiers that I have quoted to madame were somewhat of the kind of these confessions of the primitive Church; and to-day, still, at the moment when battle is announced, a military almoner gives the signal for confession. The regiments confess on their knees before the Most High, who hears them; and the almoner, raised aloft on a pile of drums, holds the crucifix in one hand, and with the other gives the general absolution to eighty thousand soldiers at once."

This clear and precise explanation somewhat calmed Madame de Maintenon, and Madame la Dauphine,--displeased at what she had done on arriving,--in order to be regular, learned to confess in French.

CHAPTER XV.

Pere de la Chaise.--The Jesuits.--The Pavilion of Belleville.--The Handkerchief.

Pere de la Chaise has never done me good or ill; I have no motives for conciliating him, no reason to slander him. I am ignorant if he were the least in the world concerned, at the epoch of the Grand Jubilee, with those ecclesiastical attempts of which Bossuet had const.i.tuted himself spokesman. Pere de la Chaise has in his favour a great evenness of temper and character; an excellent tone, which comes to him from his birth; a conciliatory philosophy, which renders him always master of his condition and of his metier. He is, in a single individual, the happy combination of several men, that is to say, he is by turns, and as it may be needful, a man indulgent or severe in his preaching; a man of abstinence, or a good feeder; a man of the world, or a cen.o.bite; a man of his breviary, or a courtier. He knows that the sins of woodcutters and the sins of kings are not of the same family, and that copper and gold are not weighed in the same scales.

He is a Jesuit by his garb; he is much more so than they are by his 'savoir-vivre'. His companions love the King because he is the King; he loves him, and pities him because he sees his weakness. He shows for his penitent the circ.u.mspection and tenderness of a father, and in the long run he has made of him a spoiled child.

This Pere de la Chaise fell suddenly ill, and with symptoms so alarming that the cabals each wished to appropriate this essential post of confessor.

The Jansenists would have been quite willing to lay hold of it. The Jesuits, and princ.i.p.ally the cordons bleus, did not quit the pillow of the sick man for an instant.

The King had himself informed of his condition every half-hour. There was a bulletin, as there is for potentates. One evening, when the doctors were grave on his account, I saw anxiety and affliction painted on the visage of his Majesty.

"Where shall I find his like?" said he to me. "Where shall I find such knowledge, such indulgence, such kindness? The Pere de la Chaise knew the bottom of my heart; he knew, as an intelligent man, how to reconcile religion with nature; and when duty brings me to the foot of his tribunal, as a humble Christian, he never forgets that royalty, cannot be long on its knees, and he accompanies with his attentions and with deference the religious commands which he is bound to impose on me."

"I hope that G.o.d will preserve him to you," I replied to his Majesty; "but let us suppose the case in which this useful and precious man should see his career come to an end; will you grant still this mark of confidence and favour to the Jesuits? All the French being your subjects, would it not be fitting to grant this distinction sometimes to the one and sometimes to the other? You would, perhaps, extinguish by this that hate or animosity by which the Jesuits see themselves a.s.sailed, which your preference draws upon them."

"I do not love the Jesuits with that affection that you seem to suggest,"

replied the monarch. "I look upon them as men of instruction, as a learned and well-governed corporation; but as for their attachment for me, I know how to estimate it. This kind of people, strangers to the soft emotions of nature, have no affection or love for anything. Before the triumph of the King my grandfather, they intrigued and exerted themselves to bring about his fall; he opened the gates of Paris, and the Jesuits, like the Capuchins, at once recognised him and bowed down before him. King Henri, who knew what men are, pretended to forget the past; he p.r.o.nounced himself decidedly in favour of the Jesuits because this body of teachers, numerous, rich, and of good credit, had just p.r.o.nounced itself in favour of him.

"It was, then, a reconciliation between power and power, and the politics of my grandfather were to survive him and become mine, since the same elements exist and I am encamped on the same ground. If G.o.d takes away from me my poor Pere de la Chaise, I shall feel this misfortune deeply, because I shall lose in him, not a Jesuit, not a priest, but a good companion, a trusty and proved friend. If I lose him, I shall a.s.suredly be inconsolable for him; but it will be very necessary for me to take his successor from the Grand Monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine. This community knows me by heart, and I do not like innovations."

The successor of the Pere de la Chaise was already settled with the Jesuit Fathers; but this man of the vanguard was spared marching and meeting danger. The Court was not condemned to see and salute a new face; the old confessor recovered his health. His Majesty experienced a veritable joy at it, a joy as real as if the Prince of Orange had died.

Wis.h.i.+ng to prove to the good convalescent how dear his preservation was to him, the King released him from his function for the rest of the year, and begged him to watch over his health, the most important of his duties and his possessions.