[1771 A.D.] presence, to see any member of the royal family, or to frequent any place where the court might be established." Anyone who opposed the chancellor's plans was either banished or imprisoned. If a parliament, by its decisions or by its representations, reflected in any way upon the new tribunals, it was immediately dissolved and replaced by judges chosen from among the sheriffs or seneschals. All the parliaments in the kingdom were thus successively destroyed and reconstructed during the year 1771. This revolution of judicial order had taken place without any hindrance. Open opposition gradually diminished, as the new tribunals became consolidated and seemed to give promise of stability. At the end of some months, part of the bar reappeared in court. Many members of the former parliament, weary of exile, consented to a liquidation of their financial claims, thus seeming to acquiesce in the measure which struck a mortal blow at their whole order. The princes found their banishment from court a great hardship. By mutual agreement it was resolved to look upon their protest as not having taken place, and they reappeared at Versailles-first, the prince of Condé and the duke de Bourbon, later on the Orleans family. The prince of Conti alone remained true to his convictions. Maupeou and Aiguillon were triumphant. Their work seemed to be prospering, their ascendency complete. Madame du Barry was a reigning power; the princes frequented her receptions, and many of the courtiers intrigued to gain the privilege of being admitted to the supper-parties at which she entertained the king. But this apparent calm concealed a deep wound. Maupeou had set a disastrous example of instability, and furnished a logical justification of future revolutions. People saw in his policy only an attempt to establish a weak despotism built up by an adventurer, assisted by a courtesan. Montesquieu, when discussing the different forms of government, had pointed out those which he considered most likely to conduce to the liberty and happiness of nations. In the midst of their declamations against religion, the philosophers also threw out suggestions of liberty, and soon men's imaginations began to follow them in their inquiries as to the right relations between sovereigns and their subjects, and the duties of people to the king. The attack directed by Maupeou against the inviolability of the magistracy, gave a considerable impetus to this disposition of men's minds. Already the expression "the sovereignty of the people" was being timidly uttered in this old nation which was trying to become young again. If no revolt took place in 1771 it was because the educated classes, amongst whom revolutions always originate, not knowing exactly what they desired, had not been able to incite the lower classes, who put their convictions into action almost before they are clearly defined. Around the king chaos was beginning to prevail. No sooner had the ministers overcome their enemies than they became divided against themselves, each one trying to grasp power at the expense of his colleagues. In society confusion reigned, because, while exceedingly tired of existing things, men knew not what means to adopt in order to change what they disliked. The general dissatisfaction was shown in popular songs and jokes incessantly passing from mouth to mouth. The latest news of the disgraceful proceedings at court, and the vileness of certain magistrates were rapidly circulated and eagerly sought for by the irritated public. The police found it impossible to stop the sale of satirical writings. "The libel-mongers,' says Lacretelle "had acquired such power that the court sometimes compounded with them and bribed them to suppress their insulting statements [1771-1773 A.D.] so that the whole of Europe might not ring with them." What can the police do against a crime in which everyone is an accomplice? They obtained obedience, but were laughed at all the same. The punishments appeared more ridiculous than terrible, people cared little for a few months' banishment provided it helped to bring about a better state of things. Some military men even were beginning to doubt the doctrine of passive obedience. It did indeed vanish, but the monarchy fell into decay at the same time. The revolutionary tendency received a powerful impétus from the deep resentment aroused by Maupeou and Terray, who succeeded in alienating all parties. The first, not satisfied with having wrecked the magistracy, kept provinces where the states were held1 in subjection to terrorism. Warrants were issued more frequently than ever from the office of the duke de la Vrillière. The marchioness of Langéac, his mistress, used to sell them, and never refused one to any powerful man who had a grievance to avenge or a passion to gratify. The comte de Ségur tells an anecdote whose humour renders it all the more horrible, as an instance of the corrupt ministry under the duke de la Vrillière: One day the chevalier de Coigny met a young flower girl remarkable for her beauty, called Jeanneton. She looked remarkably happy and on his asking why, said, "I am joyful because I have been to the count de Sainte-Florentin, and Madame persuaded him to give me for ten louis a warrant of arrest against my husband, who is a brute, and is cruel to me.' 66 Two years after the count met the same Jeanneton, but now pale, thin, and hollow-eyed. Why, Jeanneton, what has become of you, my poor girl; I never see you?" "Alas, sir, I was very silly to rejoice. My husband had the same idea as myself. He went to the same minister and by the same means got me sent to prison, so that twenty louis were spent by our poor family to get both of us shut up." THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XV (1774 A.D.) Meanwhile, his old fear of hell had grown upon the king with increased force; and this it was that suggested to Du Barry the fantastic idea of playing the rôle of De Maintenon. While the first dignitaries of the church prostituted the Roman purple at the feet of a courtesan, a simple priest had [These were the pays d'état, of which there were seventeen in 1789, such as Brittany, Burgundy, Provence, Languedoc, etc. These were the most recent acquisitions of the crown, and had retained certain of the old liberties.] [1773-1774 A.D.] dared to raise a protesting voice. The abbé De Beauvais, preaching the sermon on Holy Thursday, 1773, before the king and his favourite, stupefied the court with this allusion: "Solomon, fallen anew into debauchery, worn out in the attempt to spur his jaded senses by all the pleasures surrounding the throne, ended by seeking fresh diversions among the vile dregs of public corruption !" He awaited at least disgrace, if not even the Bastille; he received a bishopric. Louis rewarded the rude warning, but he failed to profit by it. The Du Barry, terrified, plunged him deeper still into the mud; the favourite called to her aid all the infamies of the Parc-aux-Cerfs.1 Seeking therein a pillar of support, she found instead her own ruin and Louis' death. The latter, an old man reeking with corruption, was at last struck down by his own vices, and his last victim dragged him to the tomb. A girl hardly more than a child, daughter of a miller in the environs of Trianon, by force of promises and threats had been delivered up to Louis by the royal police. Carrying in her system the germs of smallpox, of which she herself soon after died, she infected the king. On April 29th, 1774, the disease broke out, complicated by other evils smouldering in his vitiated blood.2 Du Barry and her creatures held their own for some days against those who preached penitence and the sacraments; when, the situation growing desperate, Louis sent the favourite to the duke d'Aiguillon at Ruel. The day following he declared that, though responsible for his conduct to God alone, he regretted having been the cause of scandal to his subjects. Dying despotism still stammered its formulas, interrupted by the death-rattle. As on the famous journey of Metz, in 1744, Versailles, Paris-all France awaited anxiously day by day, hour by hour, news of the health of that prince known in those other days as Louis the Well-beloved; but this time. one dread alone was manifested — that he would recover. When it was known that he had at last expired, the 10th of May, at two in the afternoon, a heavy weight was lifted from the heart of France. The putrefied remains, which tainted the air, were removed in haste and without pomp to St. Denis, amid the sarcasms of the crowd which lined the way.n Carlyle on the Last Hours of Louis XV Louis would not suffer Death to be spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funeral monuments, and whatsoever would bring it to mind. It is the resource of the Ostrich. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the same thing, and of more, he would go; or stopping his court carriages would send into churchyards, and ask "how many new graves there were to-day," though it gave his poor Pompadour the disagreeablest qualms. We can figure the thought of Louis that day, when, all royally caparisoned for hunting, he met, at some sudden turning in the Wood of Senart, a ragged Peasant with a coffin: "For whom?" It was for a poor brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed slaving in those quarters: "What did he die of?""Of hunger": the King gave his steed the spur. 1 We speak figuratively; since the actual Parc-aux-Cerfs, the house on the rue St. Méderic had been sold by the king in 1771. 2 His three daughters, who had never had the disease, presented a beautiful example of filial devotion: they cared for him devotedly during the course of the illness. 3 The Mémoires de Bachaumont m cite a significant speech of the abbé Ste. de Geneviève. Some young philosophers were joking over the inefficacy of the saint's intervention in the malady of the late king. "Of what do you complain," interjected the abbé; "is he not dead?" [1774 A.D.] But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heartstrings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a Dream, into void Immensity; Time is done and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unkinged, and await what is appointed for Thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all too possible, in the prospect in the retrospect, alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better 66 A FRENCH SOLDIER, TIME OF LOUIS XV And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul. Louis was a Ruler; but art thou not also one? His wide France, look at it from the Fixed Stars (themselves not yet Infinitude), is no wider than thy narrow brick-field, where thou too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully. Man, "Symbol of Eternity imprisoned into Time!" it is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least, but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance. But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when he rose as Bien-Aimé from that Metz sick-bed, really was! What son of Adam swayed such incoherences into coherence? Could he? Blindest Fortune alone has cast him on the top of it: he swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed, moon-stirred Atlantic. "What have I done to be so loved?" he said then. He may say now: What have I done to be so hated? Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis! Thy fault is properly [1774 A.D.] even this, that thou didst nothing. What could poor Louis do? Abdicate, and wash his hands of it, in favour of the first that would accept? Other clear wisdom there was none for him. As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant (a very Solecism Incarnate) into the absurdest confused world; wherein at last nothing seemed so certain as this, That he, the incarnate Solecism, had five senses that were Flying Tables (Tables Volantes, which vanish through the floor, to come back reloaded), and a Parc-aux-Cerfs. He who would understand to what a pass Catholicism, and much else, had now got; and how the symbols of the Holiest have become gambling-dice of the Basest, must read the narrative of those things by Besenval, and Soulavie, and the other Court Newsmen of the time. He will see the Versailles Galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped into new evershifting Constellations. There are nods and sagacious glances; go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette: at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as a kind of horrid diabolic horse-laughter, "Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!" Poor Louis! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory, where like mimes they mope and mowl, and utter false sounds for hire; but with thee it is frightful earnest. Doomed mortal; -for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A new Roi Fainéant, King Donothing; but with the strangest new Mayor of the Palace: no bow-legged Pepin now for Mayor, but that same Cloudcapt, fire-breathing Spectre of Democracy; incalculable, which is enveloping the world! Was Louis, then, no wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough see, under the name of Man of Pleasure, cumbering God's diligent Creation, for a time? Say, wretcheder! His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world; him endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and swallow to endless depths, not yet for a generation or two. However, be this as it will, we remark, not without interest, that "on the evening of the 4th," Dame du Barry issues from the sick-room, with perceptible trouble in her visage." It is the fourth evening of May, year of Grace 1774. Such a whispering in the Eil-de-Bœuf! Is he dying, then? What can be said, is that Du Barry seems making up her packages; she sails weeping through her gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave. Aiguillon and Company are near their last card; nevertheless they will not yet throw up the game. But as for the sacramental controversy, it is as good as settled without being mentioned; Louis sends for his Abbé Moudon in the course of next night; is confessed by him, some say for the space of "seventeen minutes," and demands the sacraments of his own accord. 66 Nay already, in the afternoon, behold is not this your Sorceress du Barry with the handkerchief at her eyes, mounting Aiguillon's chariot; rolling off in his Duchess's consolatory arms? She is gone: and her place knows her no more. Vanish, false Sorceress; into Space! Needless to hover at neighbouring Ruel; for thy day is done. Shut are the royal palace-gates for evermore; hardly in coming years shalt thou, under cloud of night, descend once, in black domino, like a black night-bird, and disturb the fair Antoinette's music-party in the park; all Birds of Paradise flying from thee, and musical windpipes growing mute. Thou unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiable thing! What a course was thine from that first trucklebed : |