Book: The Memoirs of Louis XIV., Volume 15

D >> Duc de Saint Simon >> The Memoirs of Louis XIV., Volume 15




It was no agreeable task, that which had to be performed soon after by
the Regent; I mean when he carried the news of the arrest to the King.
He entered into his Majesty's cabinet, which he cleared of all the
company it contained, except those people whose post gave them aright to
enter, but of them there were not many present. At the first word, the
King reddened; his eyes moistened; he hid his face against the back of an
armchair, without saying a word; would neither go out nor play. He ate
but a few mouthfuls at supper, wept, and did not sleep all night. The
morning and the dinner of the next day, the 14th, passed off but little
better.




CHAPTER CXIV

That same 14th, as I rose from dinner at Meudon, with much company, the
valet de chambre who served me said that a courier from Cardinal Dubois
had a letter for me, which he had not thought good to bring me before all
my guests. I opened the letter. The Cardinal conjured me to go
instantly and see him at Versailles, bringing with me a trusty servant,
ready to be despatched to La Trappe, as soon as I had spoken with him,
and not to rack my brains to divine what this might mean, because it
would be impossible to divine it, and that he was waiting with the utmost
impatience to tell it to me. I at once ordered my coach, which I thought
a long time in coming from the stables. They are a considerable distance
from the new chateau I occupied.

This courier to be taken to the Cardinal, in order to be despatched to La
Trappe, turned my head. I could not imagine what had happened to occupy
the Cardinal so thoroughly so soon after the arrest of Villeroy. The
constitution, or some important and unknown fugitive discovered at La
Trappe, and a thousand other thoughts, agitated me until I arrived at
Versailles.

Upon reaching the chateau, I saw Dubois at a window awaiting me, and
making many signs to me, and upon reaching the staircase, I found him
there at the bottom, as I was about to mount. His first word was to ask
me if I had brought with me a man who could post to La Trappe. I showed
him my valet de chambre, who knew the road well, having travelled over it
with me very often, and who was well known to the Cardinal, who, when
simple Abbe Dubois, used very frequently to chat with him while waiting
for me.

The Cardinal explained to me, as we ascended the stairs, the cause of his
message. Immediately after the departure of the Marechal de Villeroy,
M. le Frejus, the King's instructor, had been missed. He had
disappeared. He had not slept at Versailles. No one knew what had
become of him! The grief of the King had so much increased upon
receiving this fresh blow--both his familiar friends taken from him at
once--that no one knew what to do with him. He was in the most violent
despair, wept bitterly, and could not be pacified. The Cardinal
concluded by saying that no stone must be left unturned in order to find
M. de Frejus. That unless he had gone to Villeroy, it was probable he
had hid himself in La Trappe, and that we must send and see. With this
he led me to M. le Duc d'Orleans. He was alone, much troubled, walking
up and down his chamber, and he said to me that he knew not what would
become of the King, or what to do with him; that he was crying for M. de
Frejus, and--would listen to nothing; and the Regent began himself to cry
out against this strange flight.

After some further consideration, Dubois pressed me to go and write to La
Trappe. All was in disorder where we were; everybody spoke at once in
the cabinet; it was impossible, in the midst of all this noise, to write
upon the bureau, as I often did when I was alone with the King. My
apartment was in the new wing, and perhaps shut up, for I was not
expected that day. I went therefore, instead, into the chamber of Peze,
close at hand, and wrote my letter there. The letter finished, and I
about to descend, Peze, who had left me, returned, crying, "He is found!
he is found! your letter is useless; return to M. le Duc d'Orleans."

He then related to me that just before, one of M. le Duc d'Orleans'
people, who knew that Frejus was a friend of the Lamoignons, had met
Courson in the grand court, and had asked him if he knew what had become
of Frejus; that Courson had replied, "Certainly: he went last night to
sleep at Basville, where the President Lamoignon is;" and that upon this,
the man hurried Courson to M. le Duc d'Orleans to relate this to him.

Peze and I arrived at M. le Duc d'Orleans' room just after Courson left
it. Serenity had returned. Frejus was well belaboured. After a moment
of cheerfulness, Cardinal Dubois advised M. le Duc d'Orleans to go and
carry this good news to the King, and to say that a courier should at
once be despatched to Basville, to make his preceptor return. M. le Duc
d'Orleans acted upon the suggestion, saying he would return directly. I
remained with Dubois awaiting him.

After having discussed a little this mysterious flight of Frejus, Dubois
told me he had news of Villeroy. He said that the Marechal had not
ceased to cry out against the outrage committed upon his person, the
audacity of the Regent, the insolence of Dubois, or to hector Artagnan
all the way for having lent himself to such criminal violence; then he
invoked the Manes of the deceased King, bragged of his confidence in him,
the importance of the place he held, and for which he had been preferred
above all others; talked of the rising that so impudent an enterprise
would cause in Paris, throughout the realm, and in foreign countries;
deplored the fate of the young King and of all the kingdom; the officers
selected by the late King for the most precious of charges, driven away,
the Duc du Maine first, himself afterwards; then he burst out into
exclamations and invectives; then into praises of his services, of his
fidelity, of his firmness, of his inviolable attachment to his duty. In
fact, he was so astonished, so troubled, so full of vexation and of rage,
that he was thoroughly beside himself. The Duc de Villeroy, the Marechal
de Tallard and Biron had permission to go and see him at Villeroy:
scarcely anybody else asked for it.

M. le Duc d'Orleans having returned from the King, saying that the news
he had carried had much appeased his Majesty, we agreed we must so
arrange matters that Frejus should return the next morning, that M. le
Duc d'Orleans should receive him well, as though nothing had happened,
and give him to understand that it was simply to avoid embarrassing him,
that he had not been made aware of the secret of the arrest (explaining
this to him with all the more liberty, because Frejus hated the Marechal,
his haughtiness, his jealousy, his capriciousness, and in his heart must
be delighted at his removal, and at being able to have entire possession
of the--King), then beg him to explain to the King the necessity of
Villeroy's dismissal: then communicate to Frejus the selection of the Duc
de Charost as governor of the King; promise him all the concert and the
attention from this latter he could desire; ask him to counsel and guide
Charost; finally, seize the moment of the King's joy at the return of
Frejus to inform his Majesty of the new governor chosen, and to present
Charost to him. All this was arranged and very well, executed next day.

When the Marechal heard of it at Villeroy, he flew into a strange passion
against Charost (of whom he spoke with the utmost contempt for having
accepted his place), but above all against Frejus, whom he called a
traitor and a villain! His first moments of passion, of fury, and of
transport, were all the more violent, because he saw by the tranquillity
reigning everywhere that his pride had deceived him in inducing him to
believe that the Parliament, the markets, all Paris would rise if the
Regent dared to touch a person so important and so well beloved as he
imagined himself to be. This truth, which he could no longer hide from
himself, and which succeeded so rapidly to the chimeras that had been his
food and his life, threw him into despair, and turned his head. He fell
foul of the Regent, of his minister, of those employed to arrest him, of
those who had failed to defend him, of all who had not risen in revolt to
bring him back in triumph, of Charost, who had dared to succeed him, and
especially of Frejus, who had deceived him in such an unworthy manner.
Frejus was the person against whom he was the most irritated. Reproaches
of ingratitude and of treachery rained unceasingly upon him; all that the
Marechal had done for him with the deceased King was recollected; how he
had protected, aided, lodged, and fed him; how without him (Villeroy) he
(Frejus) would never have been preceptor of the King; and all this was
exactly true.

The treachery to which he alluded he afterwards explained. He said that
he and Frejus had agreed at the very commencement of the regency to act
in union; and that if by troubles or events impossible to foresee, but
which were only too common in regencies, one of them should be dismissed
from office, the other not being able to hinder the dismissal, though not
touched himself, should at once withdraw and never return to his post,
until the first was reinstated in his. And after these explanations, new
cries broke out against the perfidy of this miserable wretch--(for the
most odious terms ran glibly from the end of his tongue)--who thought
like a fool to cover his perfidy with a veil of gauze, in slipping off to
Basville, so as to be instantly sought and brought back, in fear lest he
should lose his place by the slightest resistance or the slightest delay,
and who expected to acquit himself thus of his word, and of the
reciprocal engagement both had taken; and then he returned to fresh
insults and fury against this serpent, as he said, whom he had warmed and
nourished so many years in his bosom.

The account of these transports and insults, promptly came from Villeroy
to Versailles, brought, not only by the people whom the Regent had placed
as guards over the Marechal, and to give an exact account of all he said
and did, day by day, but by all the domestics who came and went, and
before whom Villeroy launched out his speeches, at table, while passing
through his ante-chambers, or while taking a turn in his gardens.

All this weighed heavily upon Frejus by the rebound. Despite the
apparent tranquillity of his visage, he appeared confounded. He replied
by a silence of respect and commiseration in which he enveloped himself;
nevertheless, he could not do so to the Duc de Villeroy, the Marechal de
Tallard, and a few others. He tranquilly said to them, that he had done
all he could to fulfil an engagement which he did not deny, but that
after having thus satisfied the call of honour, he did not think he could
refuse to obey orders so express from the King and the Regent, or abandon
the former in order to bring about the return of the Marechal de
Villeroy, which was the object of their reciprocal engagement, and which
he was certain he could not effect by absence, however prolonged. But
amidst these very sober excuses could be seen the joy which peeped forth
from him, in spite of himself, at being freed from so inconvenient a
superior, at having to do with a new governor whom he could easily
manage, at being able when he chose to guide himself in all liberty
towards the grand object he had always desired, which was to attach
himself to the King without reserve, and to make out of this attachment,
obtained by all sorts of means, the means of a greatness which he did not
yet dare to figure to himself, but which time and opportunity would teach
him how to avail himself of in the best manner, marching to it meanwhile
in perfect security.

The Marechal was allowed to refresh himself, and exhale his anger five or
six days at Villeroy; and as he was not dangerous away from the King, he
was sent to Lyons, with liberty to exercise his functions of governor of
the town and province, measures being taken to keep a watch upon him, and
Des Libois being left with him to diminish his authority by this
manifestation of precaution and surveillance, which took from him all
appearance of credit. He would receive no honours on arriving there.
A large quantity of his first fire was extinguished; this wide separation
from Paris and the Court, where not even the slightest movement had taken
place, everybody being stupefied and in terror at an arrest of this
importance; took from him all remaining hope, curbed his impetuosity, and
finally induced him to conduct himself with sagacity in order to avoid
worse treatment.

Such was the catastrophe of a man, so incapable of all the posts he had
occupied, who displayed chimeras and audacity in the place of prudence
and sagacity, who everywhere appeared a trifler and a comedian, and whose
universal and profound ignorance (except of the meanest arts of the
courtier) made plainly visible the thin covering of probity and of virtue
with which he tried to hide his ingratitude, his mad ambition, his desire
to overturn all in order to make himself the chief of all, in the midst
of his weakness and his fears, and to hold a helm he was radically
incapable of managing. I speak here only of his conduct since the
establishment of the regency. Elsewhere, in more than one place, the
little or nothing he was worth has been shown; how his ignorance and his
jealousy lost us Flanders, and nearly ruined the State; how his felicity
was pushed to the extreme, and what deplorable reverses followed his
return. Sufficient to say that he never recovered from the state into
which this last madness threw him, and that the rest of his life was only
bitterness, regret, contempt! He had persuaded the King that it was he,
alone, who by vigilance and precaution had preserved his life from poison
that others wished to administer to him. This was the source of those
tears shed by the King when Villeroy was carried off, and of his despair
when Frejus disappeared. He did not doubt that both had been removed in
order that this crime might be more easily committed.

The prompt return of Frejus dissipated the half, of his fear, the
continuance of his good health delivered him by degrees from the other.
The preceptor, who had a great interest in preserving the King, and who
felt much relieved by the absence of Villeroy, left nothing undone in
order to extinguish these gloomy ideas; and consequently to let blame
fall upon him who had inspired them. He feared the return of the
Marechal when the King, who was approaching his majority, should be the
master; once delivered of the yoke he did not wish it to be reimposed
upon him. He well knew that the grand airs, the ironies, the
authoritative fussiness in public of the Marechal were insupportable to
his Majesty, and that they held together only by those frightful ideas of
poison. To destroy them was to show the Marechal uncovered, and worse
than that to show to the King, without appearing to make a charge against
the Marechal, the criminal interest he had in exciting these alarms, and
the falsehood and atrocity of such a venomous invention. These
reflections; which the health of the King each day confirmed, sapped all
esteem, all gratitude, and left his Majesty in full liberty of conscience
to prohibit, when he should be the master, all approach to his person on
the part of so vile and so interested an impostor.

Frejus made use of these means to shelter himself against the possibility
of the Marechal's return, and to attach himself to the King without
reserve. The prodigious success of his schemes has been only too well
felt since.

The banishment of Villeroy, flight and return of Frejus, and installation
of Charost as governor of the King, were followed by the confirmation of
his Majesty by the Cardinal de Rohan, and by his first communion,
administered to him by this self-same Cardinal, his grand almoner.




CHAPTER CXV

Villeroy being banished, the last remaining obstacle in Dubois' path was
removed. There was nothing: now, to hinder him from being proclaimed
prime minister. I had opposed it as stoutly as I could; but my words
were lost upon M. le Duc d'Orleans. Accordingly, about two o'clock in
the afternoon of the 23rd of August, 1722, Dubois was declared prime
minister by the Regent, and by the Regent at once conducted to the King
as such.

After this event I began insensibly to withdraw from public affairs.
Before the end of the year the King was consecrated at Rheims. The
disorder at the ceremony was inexpressible. All precedent was forgotten.
Rank was hustled and jostled, so to speak, by the crowd. The desire to
exclude the nobility from all office and all dignity was obvious, at half
a glance. My spirit was ulcerated at this; I saw approaching the
complete re-establishment of the bastards; my heart was cleft in twain,
to see the Regent at the heels of his unworthy minister. He was a prey
to the interest, the avarice, the folly, of this miserable wretch, and no
remedy possible. Whatever experience I might have had of the astonishing
weakness of M. le Duc d'Orleans, it had passed all bounds when I saw him
with my own eyes make Dubois prime minister, after all I had said to him
on the subject,--after all he had said to me. The year 1723 commenced,
and found me in this spirit. It is at the end of this year I have
determined to end those memoirs, and the details of it will not be so
full or so abundant as of preceding years. I was hopelessly wearied with
M. le Duc d'Orleans; I no longer approached this poor prince (with so
many great and useless talents buried in him)--except with repugnance.
I could not help feeling for him what the poor, Israelites said to
themselves in the desert about the manna: "Nauseat anima mea suffer cibum
istum tevissimum." I no longer deigned to speak to him. He perceived
this: I felt he was pained at it; he strove to reconcile me to him,
without daring, however, to speak of affairs, except briefly, and with
constraint, and yet he could not hinder himself from speaking of them.
I scarcely took the trouble to reply to him, and I cut his conversation
as short as possible. I abridged and curtailed my audiences with him;
I listened to his reproaches with coldness. In fact, what had I to
discuss with a Regent who was no longer one, not even over himself, still
less over a realm plunged in disorder?

Cardinal Dubois, when he met me, almost courted me. He knew not how to
catch me. The bonds which united me to M. le Duc d'Orleans had always
been so strong that the prime minister, who knew their strength, did not
dare to flatter himself he could break them. His resource was to try to
disgust me by inducing his master to treat me with a reserve which was
completely new to him, and which cost him more than it cost me; for, in
fact, he had often found my confidence very useful to him, and had grown
accustomed to it. As for me, I dispensed with his friendship more than
willingly, vexed at being no longer able to gather any fruit from it for
the advantage of the State or himself, wholly abandoned as he was to his
Paris pleasures and to his minister. The conviction of my complete
inutility more and more kept me in the background, without the slightest
suspicion that different conduct could be dangerous to me, or that, weak
and abandoned to Dubois as was the Regent, the former could ever exile
me, like the Duc de Roailles, and Cariillac, or disgust me into exiling
myself. I followed, then, my accustomed life. That is to say, never saw
M. le Duc d'Orleans except tete-a-tete, and then very seldom at intervals
that each time grew longer, coldly, briefly, never talking to him of
business, or, if he did to me, returning the conversation, and replying
it! a manner to make it drop. Acting thus, it is easy to see that I was
mixed up in nothing, and what I shall have to relate now will have less
of the singularity and instructiveness of good and faithful memoirs, than
of the dryness and sterility of the gazettes.

First of all I will finish my account of Cardinal Dubois. I have very
little more to say of him; for he had scarcely begun to enjoy his high
honours when Death came to laugh at him for the sweating labour he had
taken to acquire them.

On the 11th of June, 1723, the King went to reside at Meudon, ostensibly
in order that the chateau of Versailles might be cleared--in reality,
to accommodate Cardinal Dubois. He had just presided over the assembly
of the day, and flattered to the last degree at this, wished to repose
upon the honour. He desired, also, to be present sometimes at the
assembling of the Company of the Indies. Meudon brought him half-way to
Paris, and saved him a journey. His debauchery had so shattered his
health that the movement of a coach gave him pains which he very
carefully hid.

The King held at Meudon a review of his household, which in his pride the
Cardinal must needs attend. It cost him dear. He mounted on horseback
the better, to enjoy his triumph; he suffered cruelly, and became so
violently ill that he was obliged to have assistance. The most
celebrated doctors and physicians were called in, with great secrecy.
They shook their heads, and came so often that news of the illness began
to transpire. Dubois was unable to go to Paris again more than once or
twice, and then with much trouble, and solely to conceal his malady,
which gave him no repose.

He left nothing undone, in fact, to hide it from the world; he went as
often as he could to the council; apprised the ambassadors he would go to
Paris, and did not go; kept himself invisible at home, and bestowed the
most frightful abuse upon everybody who dared to intrude upon him. On
Saturday, the 7th of August, he was so ill that the doctors declared he
must submit to an operation, which was very urgent, and without which he
could hope to live but a few days; because the abscess he had having
burst the day he mounted on horseback, gangrene had commenced, with an
overflow of pus, and he must be transported, they added, to Versailles,
in order to undergo this operation. The trouble this terrible
announcement caused him, so overthrew him that he could not be moved the
next day, Sunday, the 8th; but on Monday he was transported in a litter,
at five o'clock in the morning.

After having allowed him to repose himself a, little, the doctors and
surgeons proposed that he should receive the sacrament, and submit to the
operation immediately after. This was not heard very peacefully; he had
scarcely ever been free from fury since the day of the review; he had
grown worse on Saturday, when the operation was first announced to him.
Nevertheless, some little time after, he sent for a priest from
Versailles, with whom he remained alone about a quarter of an hour.
Such a great and good man, so well prepared for death, did not need more:
Prime ministers, too, have privileged confessions. As his chamber again
filled, it was proposed that he should take the viaticum; he cried out
that that was soon said, but there was a ceremonial for the cardinals,
of which he was ignorant, and Cardinal Bissy must be sent to, at Paris,
for information upon it. Everybody looked at his neighbour, and felt
that Dubois merely wished to gain time; but as the operation was urgent,
they proposed it to him without further delay. He furiously sent them
away, and would no longer hear talk of it.

The faculty, who saw the imminent danger of the slightest delay, sent to
Meudon for M. le Duc d'Orleans, who instantly came in the first
conveyance he could lay his hands on. He exhorted the Cardinal to suffer
the operation; then asked the faculty, if it could be performed in
safety. They replied that they could say nothing for certain, but that
assuredly the Cardinal had not two hours to live if he did not instantly
agree to it. M. le Duc d'Orleans returned to the sick man, and begged
him so earnestly to do so, that he consented.

The operation was accordingly performed about five o'clock, and in five
minutes, by La Peyronie, chief surgeon of the King, and successor to
Marechal, who was present with Chirac and others of the most celebrated
surgeons and doctors. The Cardinal cried and stormed strongly. M. le
Duc d'Orleans returned into the chamber directly after the operation was
performed, and the faculty did not dissimulate from him that, judging by
the nature of the wound, and what had issued from it, the Cardinal had
not long to live. He died, in fact, twenty-four hours afterwards, on the
10th, of August, at five o'clock in the morning, grinding his teeth
against his surgeons and against Chirac, whom he had never ceased to
abuse.

Extreme unction was, however, brought to him. Of the communion, nothing
more was said--or of any priest for him--and he finished his life thus,
in the utmost despair, and enraged at quitting it. Fortune had nicely
played with him; slid made him dearly and slowly buy her favours by all
sorts of trouble, care, projects, intrigues, fears, labour, torment; and
at last showered down upon him torrents of greater power, unmeasured
riches, to let him enjoy them only four years (dating from the time when
he was made Secretary of State, and only two years dating from the time
when he was made Cardinal and Prime Minister), and then snatched them
from him, in the smiling moment when he was most enjoying them, at sixty-
six years of age.

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