The speculations, cabals and intrigues round father and son, which occupied the Court for years and gave Saint-Simon material for some of his most telling pages, represented a total waste of time. In 1711 the Grand Dauphin fell ill with smallpox, at Meudon. He held his own and presently seemed to be out of the wood. Saint-Simon describes a conversation he had with the Duchesse d’Orléans when the news from Meudon was much better. Both he and she were against the Dauphin; he admired Bourgogne and she was jealous of her sister Mme la Duchesse. In the same funny, languishing family voice, in which her mother once told Mme Voisin that she only had time for one black mass, the Duchesse d’Orléans said it really was bad luck that the Dauphin, at his age (fifty-three) and fat as he was, seemed to be getting over such a dangerous illness — those wretched doctors were so careful not to forget the smallest little remedy that he could hardly help recovering. One might have hoped for a nice apoplexy but there — unfortunately he had been following a strict diet for the last year or so. In short, it looked as if they had better make up their minds to a long life and reign for their enemy. While they were going on like this at Versailles, the Dauphin’s heart, strained by constant blood-letting and purges, gave way and he died so suddenly that he only just had time to receive absolution from a curé who had happened to look in.
The King, who had been at Meudon from the beginning of the illness, was having his supper. He was stunned by the unexpected news and ran to his son’s room, but the Princess de Conti and Mme la Duchesse, who had done the nursing, forcibly prevented him from going in. When he knew for certain that all was over, he sent word to Versailles that he would go to Marly and would like to have a word with the Duchesse de Bourgogne if she would meet him in the town on his way through. The news of the death went round Versailles like lightning; and, with a curious, instinctive, crowd movement and the terrible noise of a stampede, the courtiers ran from all over the château to the Bourgognes’ apartment. The Duchess, whose face gave nothing away, picked up a shawl and went down the Queen’s staircase to her coach. She sat in it between the two stables and had not long to wait before the King arrived; she got down and was going to him when Mme de Maintenon put her head out of the window, crying ‘What are you doing, Madame? Don’t come near us, we are infectious.’ So Marie-Adélaïde went back to the château. She found her husband, with the Berris, as she had left them, seated most uncomfortably in the middle of a huge, curious crowd. Berri, who was truly sad, was crying and sobbing. Bourgogne, white as a sheet, put on no false sentiments, but was visibly shaken to find himself suddenly so near the throne. Husband and wife whispered together for a long time. The Duc d’Orléans cried like anything, and when Saint-Simon asked him why, since he and the Dauphin had long been estranged, he said, almost apologetically, that the Dauphin was a good man whom he had known all his life — perhaps his grief would not last long but he was his first cousin, blood was thicker than water and he felt the sorrow in his bowels. Madame, dressed up as for a party (she had not got a dressing-gown), and looking very odd since everybody else was in déshabillé, was howling at the top of her voice. The Duc de Beauvilliers, cold and impassive, stood by the Dauphin’s two sons keeping the crowd at a certain distance. This extraordinary scene went on from midnight until 7 a.m. when Beauvilliers said it was time to go to bed and they all retired, but only for an hour or two.
The next day the Bourgognes went to join the King at Marly where precautions against infection had been taken — those who came from Meudon had changed their clothes and herbs were burnt all over the house. The saddest person there was the Princesse de Conti; she fell so ill with sorrow that she had to be confessed. The King went to her bedroom, where he had not been for a long time as it was up a steep staircase; he noticed that various improvements would make it more comfortable and these were soon put in hand. For many years the Dauphin had not been specially nice to Marie-Anne: she had had to swallow the pill of his marrying a woman she had dismissed from her own household, and Mme la Duchesse had managed to make her feel out of it. But she was a faithful soul, possibly rather thick-skinned, like her mother, to whom she had always been so good and who had died some months before the Dauphin. Marie-Anne had done her best to make the King go and say goodbye to his old love but Mme de Maintenon would not allow it. She went herself, instead.
Mme la Duchesse was in despair, but her tears were more for her lover than for her brother. The tragedy of Conti’s death was harder to bear than ever, now that, having lost the Dauphin and on bad terms with the Bourgognes, she found herself a lone widow with many young children and no protector. Had Conti lived, and done well at the war as he surely would have, she would have shared in his glory and had a solid support to lean on. She had always been his permanent attachment; he loved her deeply in spite of many other affairs both natural and unnatural; and he was her only love. As things had turned out she was almost inclined to regret M. le Duc, terrifying though he was at the end of his life. However, Mme la Duchesse was not made for sorrow and soon put it from her. She took up with a monkey-faced Marquis de Lassay and lived with him, quite openly after the death of her father, for another thirty years. Mlle de Choin lived until 1730. The Dauphin had once shown her a will he had made leaving her a huge fortune, but she had torn it up saying that if he was there she needed nothing, if she lost him a tiny income would suffice. The King saw to it that she was comfortably off. Her widowhood was spent modestly, she was given over to good works and saw her friends but eschewed society.
The Duc de Bourgogne was now the Dauphin. His father’s death changed him amazingly; he lost his shyness and his disapproving look and became affable and easy. He attended all the Councils, received ministers and generals and prepared himself for the huge destiny which lay ahead. He had none of the faults which older people thought typical of his generation; he was grave and virtuous; not a pleasure-seeker; polite to everybody, and unlike his grandfather he understood the gradations of rank in the French aristocracy. He became popular with the notables, a popularity which soon spread to all sections of the community. Oudenarde and Lille were forgotten; Bourgogne, his fascinating wife and pretty little boys were placed on a pedestal and almost worshipped. This current of feeling reacted on the King himself who, for the first time in his life, began to delegate a substantial part of his work. The ministers were encouraged to meet in the Dauphin’s apartment; he was informed of everything that happened. He went to Paris, where the King had not set foot for four years, and was enthusiastically received there.
The new Dauphine had become quite staid and dignified; she began to hold a court in her own apartment instead of dashing here and there for her amusements. Mme de Maintenon wrote: ‘After having been preached at for bringing her up badly and blamed by everybody for her flightiness, after having seen her hated at the Court because she would not talk to people, after having known that she was accused of horrible dissimulation on account of her attachment to the King and the goodness with which she honoured me, I now find that everybody sings her praises.’
Although the King showed a new side to Bourgogne, age had done nothing to soften him towards other people. When he was preparing to go to Fontainebleau in 1711 two members of his family were in no condition to follow him there. The Duchesse de Berri was expecting her first baby, ill all the time. The doctors said she must be kept quiet and that it would be madness for her to go to Fontainebleau. Neither the little girl herself nor her father the Duc d’Orléans dared speak to the King about it. Berri trembling put in a word and had his head bitten off. Madame and Mme de Maintenon had the humanity to speak up, although neither of them liked the Duchess. The King merely became angry — said she must go and that was that. She was sent by boat in order to avoid the vibration of a coach. Unluckily the boat ran into the foundations of a bridge and snapped in two — the Duchess was badly shaken; immediately gave birth to a dead daughter, and never thereafter had a child which lived more than a few months. (Most of her babies were still-born.) The King remarked that a
s the baby was only a female no great harm was done. Almost worse, he forced the Comte de Toulouse, in frightful agony from stone, to go to Fontainebleau, also against medical insistence. Both these young people were so ill that the King hardly saw them during the whole visit.
The transformation of character which we have seen in the Duc de Bourgogne and his wife often happens with ardent and very personal young creatures, when they have found their place in the world. He was happy in his work and she with her babies: it now seemed that when the old King disappeared his realm would be in excellent hands. The events of February 1712 are almost too heartrending to relate.
In 1711 the Court had been away from Versailles for several months on account of smallpox there; hardly had the King returned than people began to go down with measles. During a long comfortable chat with two of her ladies, the Dauphine had been saying that many people had died at Versailles since she first came there fourteen years ago. How strange to be old and find oneself with hardly any contemporaries with whom one could talk about the past. Already she was twenty-six and she felt that her youth had gone! Soon after this she caught measles. She had always been delicate, had had three children and six miscarriages, and had never led a reasonable life. The first day or two of her illness she got up, feeling wretched, then she was put to bed; nine doctors came, gave her emetics and bled her. Madame was beside herself when she saw what was going on, and at last she burst out, imploring them to let the Dauphine alone. Mme de Maintenon sharply rebuked her for this impiety in medicine and told her to mind her own business. Presently Marie-Adélaïde was advised to confess. Although she felt very miserable she was surprised to learn that her condition was thought to be so desperate. Her Jesuit confessor came but she hesitated. He was a good, understanding sort of man; he saw at once that she did not want to confess to him — asked her if this was so, and when she said ‘yes’ asked whom he should send for. She send she would rather not have a Jesuit and named a priest from the Versailles parish church; he could not be found so another was brought, to whom she made a very long confession. The stupefaction at Court when all this became known may be imagined. There has never been an explanation: some thought it was because the Jesuits were too strict, others because they were not strict enough — in any case Marie-Adélaïde was known not to like them. Her sister, the Queen of Spain, did exactly the same thing when she died two years later.
‘You are going to God, Madame,’ said Mme de Maintenon. ‘Yes, aunt,’ she said, obediently swallowing two more glasses of emetic.
‘Goodbye, beautiful Duchess,’ she said to Mme de Guiche. ‘Today Dauphine and tomorrow nothing.’ It was too true.
The grief of the King and his old wife was terrible; she had been the joy of their existence. In their panic and misery they seem not to have noticed that the heartbroken husband was also very ill. The King fled to Marly and the Dauphin was persuaded to follow him there; his gentlemen dreaded that he might hear sinister noises coming from his wife’s room. When the King saw him he was struck by his look and most lovingly urged him to go to bed. He did so and never rose again. ‘I die with joy,’ he said — suffered horribly and said he knew now what his poor darling had had to endure.
Their two children caught the illness. Somebody addressed the elder boy, who was five, as ‘M. le Dauphin’. ‘Don’t,’ said the child, ‘it’s too sad!’ The doctors then dispatched him into the next world: three Dauphins of France had died in eleven months. As for the younger boy, his governess, the Duchesse de Ventadour, was determined not to let the doctors near him. While they concentrated on his brother, she took him to her own room, pretended that he was quite well, put him back to breast feeding, although he was two, kept him warm and saved his life.
Although five hundred people in Paris and several at Versailles died of measles with the same symptoms as those of the princes, there was much hysterical talk of poisoning. Madame, who never let a death go by without crying poison, found herself hoist with her own petard, because the culprit this time was supposed to be the Duc d’Orléans, and his motive, to put the Duchesse de Berri on the throne. He was thought to be carrying on an incestuous love affair with her: certainly he loved her more than anybody, and the Duchesse d’Orléans and the Duc de Berri were furiously jealous of the relationship, One might believe that the Duchesse de Berri was a poisoner — she was a pathetic, mad little person — but her father was incapable of such a crime. The worst thing old Fagon ever did was to try and arouse the King’s suspicions against Orléans — probably in order to excuse his own incompetence. Father, mother and son, all sent to Saint-Denis in the same hearse, was quite a good score even for those days. But the King greatly as he had always disliked his nephew and son-in-law, knew him well enough to be certain of his innocence and as, many years ago, he had defended Monsieur from the same accusation, now he defended Orléans. The bodies were opened with the usual horrifying ceremonial, and the surgeon Mareschal, who was present, asserted that there was not a trace of poison.
Nobody expected the new little Dauphin to live; for years he was a particularly delicate child, although he grew up to be very strong. The next heir, Philip V, was told that he must choose between Spain and France and chose Spain, though with many a mental reservation. France was his love and he never ceased to pine for his native land. So the future Regent and probably the future King seemed to be Berri whom nobody had bothered to educate. He and Louis XIV had nothing whatever in common, and the King could hardly bear the sight of his Duchess. However the two young people pulled themselves together and made a real effort. Berri began to attend Councils; he was not very clever but made up for it by his extreme sweetness — everybody loved him. His wife held a Court and did all she could, quite honestly, to take the place of Marie-Adélaïde. In 1713 she was pregnant. At seven months the waters broke and three days later, after a shattering confinement, she had a boy, born alive. Mme de Maintenon said that everybody who saw Berri at this time seemed to have been born at seven months, and to have known hundreds of healthy people born several days after their mother’s waters had broken. But the baby died.
Louis XIV was now not only sad but also bored. Mme de Maintenon, to try and amuse him, brought two old, long-neglected friends back into his little circle; Madame, twice descended from William the Silent, was, like William himself, a wonderful chatterbox and sometimes succeeded in making the King smile, and the Maréchal de Villeroy, who had lost many a battle but was a jolly soul and had been brought up with the King (the courtiers used to say that Villeroy was irresistible to women but not to the enemy). The three of them gossiped about days long ago and tried to forget the dreadful present. The King gave up his efforts to keep the courtiers amused and busy; the evening parties had stopped; the iron discipline of every hour relaxed. Both Madame and Mme de Maintenon said, in all their letters, this is no longer a Court. Mme de Maintenon: ‘We have no more Court here. Madame is not well and very low: Mme la Duchesse de Berri still has a temperature; Mme la Duchesse d’Orléans is down with every sort of affliction; Mme la Duchesse is always whining for favours; Mme la Princesse de Conti is lazy, hardly ever leaves her room, seems unwell and doesn’t bother to be elegant any more; other members of the royal family are never at Versailles; in short I have nothing good to tell you except the King’s wonderful health and courage.’ Versailles was only inhabited by the old; it had become unfashionable and the smart set escaped to Paris, which hummed with pleasure and vice. The Princesse de Conti, the Comte de Toulouse and the Duc d’Antin all bought themselves houses there; this would have been out of the question formerly and was considered an interesting sign of the times.
The only person who really managed to amuse Louis XIV was the Duc du Maine who now resumed his position of prime favourite from which he had been ousted by Marie-Adélaïde, ever since her arrival in France. He was in and out of his father’s room as much as he used to be. The old King, pushed by Mme de Maintenon, made another of those resounding mistakes to which he was so unaccountably pron
e, and forced the Paris Parlement to declare his bastards eligible for the throne of France if the legitimate branch of his own descendants should die out. This was monstrously unfair to the Duc d’Orléans. No harm was done in the event, since Bourgogne’s baby grew up and reigned as Louis XV, but the result might well have been that division of Frenchmen which it had always been the King’s policy to prevent.
The Sun King Page 23