Book: The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete

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"I was the favourite child of a numerous family, and intended, almost at
my birth--as is generally the case among Princes who are nearly allied to
crowned heads--to be united to one of the Princes, my near relation, of
the royal house of Sardinia.

"A few years after this, the Duc and Duchesse de Penthievre arrived at
Turin, on their way to Italy, for the purpose of visiting the different
Courts, to make suitable marriage contracts for both their infant
children.

"These two children were Mademoiselle de Penthievre, afterwards the
unhappy Duchesse d'Orleans, and their idolised son, the Prince de
Lamballe.

[The father of Louis Alexander Joseph Stanislaus de Bourbon Penthievre,
Prince de Lamballe, was the son of Comte de Toulouse, himself a natural
son of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan, who was considered as the most
wealthy of all the natural children, in consequence of Madame de
Montespan having artfully entrapped the famous Mademoiselle de
Moutpensier to make over her immense fortune to him as her heir after her
death, as the price of liberating her husband from imprisonment in the
Bastille, and herself from a ruinous prosecution, for having contracted
this marriage contrary to the express commands of her royal cousin, Louis
XIV.--Vide Histoire de Louis XIV. par Voltaire.]

"Happy would it have been both for the Prince who was destined to the
former and the Princess who was given to the latter, had these
unfortunate alliances never taken place.

"The Duc and Duchesse de Penthievre became so singularly attached to my
beloved parents, and, in particular, to myself, that the very day they
first dined at the Court of Turin, they mentioned the wish they had
formed of uniting me to their young son, the Prince de Lamballe.

"The King of Sardinia, as the head of the house of Savoy and Carignan,
said there had been some conversation as to my becoming a member of his
royal family; but as I was so very young at the time, many political
reasons might arise to create motives for a change in the projected
alliance. 'If, therefore, the Prince de Carignan,' said the King, 'be
anxious to settle his daughter's marriage, by any immediate matrimonial
alliance, I certainly shall not avail myself of any prior engagement, nor
oppose any obstacle in the way of its solemnisation.'

"The consent of the King being thus unexpectedly obtained by the Prince,
so desirable did the arrangement seem to the Duke and Duchess that the
next day the contract was concluded with my parents for my becoming the
wife of their only son, the Prince de Lamballe.

"I was too young to be consulted. Perhaps had I been older the result
would have been the same, for it generally happens in these great family
alliances that the parties most interested, and whose happiness is most
concerned, are the least thought of. The Prince was, I believe, at
Paris, under the tuition of his governess, and I was in the nursery,
heedless, and totally ignorant of my future good or evil destination!

"So truly happy and domestic a life as that led by the Duc and Duchesse
de Penthievre seemed to my family to offer an example too propitious not
to secure to me a degree of felicity with a private Prince, very rarely
the result of royal unions! Of course, their consent was given with
alacrity. When I was called upon to do homage to my future parents, I
had so little idea, from my extreme youthfulness, of what was going on
that I set them all laughing, when, on being asked if I should like to
become the consort of the Prince de Lamballe, I said, 'Yes, I am very
fond of music!' No, my dear,' resumed the good and tender-hearted Duc de
Penthievre, 'I mean, would you have any objection to become his
wife?'--'No, nor any other person's!' was the innocent reply, which
increased the mirth of all the guests at my expense.

"Happy, happy days of youthful, thoughtless innocence, luxuriously felt
and appreciated under the thatched roof of the cottage, but unknown and
unattainable beneath the massive pile of a royal palace and a gemmed
crown! Scarcely had I entered my teens when my adopted parents strewed
flowers of the sweetest fragrance to lead me to the sacred altar, that
promised the bliss of busses, but which, too soon, from the foul
machinations of envy, jealousy, avarice, and a still more criminal
passion, proved to me the altar of my sacrifice!

"My misery and my uninterrupted grief may be dated from the day my
beloved sister-in-law, Mademoiselle de Penthievre, sullied her hand by
its union with the Duc de Chartres.--[Afterwards Duc d'Orleans, and the
celebrated revolutionary Philippe Egalite.]--From that moment all
comfort, all prospect of connubial happiness, left my young and
affectionate heart, plucked thence by the very roots, never more again to
bloom there. Religion and philosophy were the only remedies remaining.

"I was a bride when an infant, a wife before I was a woman, a widow
before I was a mother, or had the prospect of becoming one! Our union
was, perhaps, an exception to the general rule. We became insensibly the
more attached to each other the more we were acquainted, which rendered
the more severe the separation, when we were torn asunder never to meet
again in this world!

"After I left Turin, though everything for my reception at the palaces of
Toulouse and Rambouillet had been prepared in the most sumptuous style of
magnificence, yet such was my agitation that I remained convulsively
speechless for many hours, and all the affectionate attention of the
family of the Duc de Penthievre could not calm my feelings.

"Among those who came about me was the bridegroom himself, whom I had
never yet seen. So anxious was he to have his first acquaintance
incognito that he set off from Paris the moment he was apprised of my
arrival in France and presented himself as the Prince's page. As he had
outgrown the figure of his portrait, I received him as such; but the
Prince, being better pleased with me than he had apprehended he should
be, could scarcely avoid discovering himself. During our journey to
Paris I myself disclosed the interest with which the supposed page had
inspired me. 'I hope,' exclaimed I, 'my Prince will allow his page to
attend me, for I like him much.'

"What was my surprise when the Duc de Penthievre presented me to the
Prince and I found in him the page for whom I had already felt such an
interest! We both laughed and wanted words to express our mutual
sentiments. This was really love at first sight.

[The young Prince was enraptured at finding his lovely bride so superior
in personal charms to the description which had been given of her, and
even to the portrait sent to him from Turin. Indeed, she must have been
a most beautiful creature, for when I left her in the year 1792, though
then five-and-forty years of age, from the freshness of her complexion,
the elegance of her figure, and the dignity of her deportment, she
certainly did not appear to be more than thirty. She had a fine head of
hair, and she took great pleasure in showing it unornamented. I remember
one day, on her coming hastily from the bath, as she was putting on her
dress, her cap falling off, her hair completely covered her!

The circumstances of her death always make me shudder at the recollection
of this incident! I have been assured by Mesdames Mackau, de Soucle, the
Comtesse de Noailles (not Duchesse, as Mademoiselle Bertin has created
her in her Memoirs of that name), and others, that the Princesse de
Lamballe was considered the most beautiful and accomplished Princess at
the Court of Louis XV., adorned with all the grace, virtue, and elegance
of manner which so eminently distinguished her through life.]

"The Duc de Chartres, then possessing a very handsome person and most
insinuating address, soon gained the affections of the amiable
Mademoiselle Penthievre. Becoming thus a member of the same family, he
paid me the most assiduous attention. From my being his sister-in-law,
and knowing he was aware of my great attachment to his young wife, I
could have no idea that his views were criminally levelled at my honour,
my happiness, and my future peace of mind. How, therefore, was I
astonished and shocked when he discovered to me his desire to supplant
the legitimate object of my affections, whose love for me equalled mine
for him! I did not expose this baseness of the Duc de Chartres, out of
filial affection for my adopted father, the Duc de Penthievre; out of the
love I bore his amiable daughter, she being pregnant; and, above all, in
consequence of the fear I was under of compromising the life of the
Prince, my husband, who I apprehended might be lost to me if I did not
suffer in silence. But still, through my silence he was lost--and oh,
how dreadfully! The Prince was totally in the dark as to the real
character of his brother-in-law. He blindly became every day more and
more attached to the man, who was then endeavouring by the foulest means
to blast the fairest prospects of his future happiness in life! But my
guardian angel protected me from becoming a victim to seduction,
defeating every attack by that prudence which has hitherto been my
invincible shield.

"Guilt, unpunished in its first crime, rushes onward, and hurrying from
one misdeed to another, like the flood-tide, drives all before it! My
silence, and his being defeated without reproach, armed him with courage
for fresh daring, and he too well succeeded in embittering the future
days of my life, as well as those of his own affectionate wife, and his
illustrious father-in-law, the virtuous Duc de Penthievre, who was to all
a father.

"To revenge himself upon me for the repulse he met with, this man
inveigled my young, inexperienced husband from his bridal bed to those
infected with the nauseous poison of every vice! Poor youth! he soon
became the prey of every refinement upon dissipation and studied
debauchery, till at length his sufferings made his life a burthen, and he
died in the most excruciating agonies both of mind and body, in the arms
of a disconsolate wife and a distracted father--and thus, in a few short
months, at the age of eighteen, was I left a widow to lament my having
become a wife!

"I was in this situation, retired from the world and absorbed in grief,
with the ever beloved and revered illustrious father of my murdered lord,
endeavouring to sooth his pangs for the loss of those comforts in a child
with which my cruel disappointment forbade my ever being blest--though,
in the endeavour to soothe, I often only aggravated both his and my own
misery at our irretrievable loss--when a ray of unexpected light burst
upon my dreariness. It was amid this gloom of human agony, these
heartrending scenes of real mourning, that the brilliant star shone to
disperse the clouds which hovered over our drooping heads,--to dry the
hot briny tears which were parching up our miserable vegetating
existence--it was in this crisis that Marie Antoinette came, like a
messenger sent down from Heaven, graciously to offer the balm of comfort
in the sweetest language of human compassion. The pure emotions of her
generous soul made her unceasing, unremitting, in her visits to two
mortals who must else have perished under the weight of their
misfortunes. But for the consolation of her warm friendship we must have
sunk into utter despair!

"From that moment I became seriously attached to the Queen of France. She
dedicated a great portion of her time to calm the anguish of my poor
heart, though I had not yet accepted the honour of becoming a member of
Her Majesty's household. Indeed, I was a considerable time before I
could think of undertaking a charge I felt myself so completely incapable
of fulfilling. I endeavoured to check the tears that were pouring down
my cheeks, to conceal in the Queen's presence the real feelings of my
heart, but the effort only served to increase my anguish when she had
departed. Her attachment to me, and the cordiality with which she
distinguished herself towards the Duc de Penthievre, gave her a place in
that heart, which had been chilled by the fatal vacuum left by its first
inhabitant; and Marie Antoinette was the only rival through life that
usurped his pretensions, though she could never wean me completely from
his memory.

"My health, from the melancholy life I led, had so much declined that my
affectionate father, the Duc de Penthievre, with whom I continued to
reside, was anxious that I should emerge from my retirement for the
benefit of my health. Sensible of his affection, and having always
honoured his counsels, I took his advice in this instance. It being in
the hard winter, when so many persons were out of bread, the Queen, the
Duchesse d'Orleans, the Duc de Penthievre, and myself, introduced the
German sledges, in which we were followed by most of the nobility and the
rich citizens. This afforded considerable employment to different
artificers. The first use I made of my own new vehicle was to visit, in
company with the Duc de Penthievre, the necessitous poor families and our
pensioners. In the course of our rounds we met the Queen.

"'I suppose,' exclaimed Her Majesty, 'you also are laying a good
foundation for my work! Heavens! what must the poor feel! I am wrapped
up like a diamond in a box, covered with furs, and yet I am chilled with
cold!'

"'That feeling sentiment,' said the Duke, 'will soon warm many a cold
family's heart with gratitude to bless Your Majesty!'

"'Why, yes,' replied Her Majesty, showing a long piece of paper
containing the names of those to whom she intended to afford relief, 'I
have only collected two hundred yet on my list, but the cure will do the
rest and help me to draw the strings of my privy purse! But I have not
half done my rounds. I daresay before I return to Versailles I shall
have as many more, and, since we are engaged in the same business, pray
come into my sledge and do not take my work out of my hands! Let me have
for once the merit of doing something good!'

"On the coming up of a number of other vehicles belonging to the sledge
party, the Queen added, 'Do not say anything about what I have been
telling you!' for Her Majesty never wished what she did in the way of
charity or donations should be publicly known, the old pensioners
excepted, who, being on the list, could not be concealed; especially as
she continued to pay all those she found of the late Queen of Louis XV.
She was remarkably delicate and timid with respect to hurting the
feelings of any one; and, fearing the Duc de Penthievre might not be
pleased at her pressing me to leave him in order to join her, she said,
'Well, I will let you off, Princess, on your both promising to dine with
me at Trianon; for the King is hunting, not deer, but wood for the poor,
and he will see his game off to Paris before he comes back:

"The Duke begged to be excused, but wished me to accept the invitation,
which I did, and we parted, each to pursue our different sledge
excursions.

"At the hour appointed, I made my appearance at Trianon, and had the
honour to dine tete-a-tete with Her Majesty, which was much more
congenial to my feelings than if there had been a party, as I was still
very low-spirited and unhappy.

"After dinner, 'My dear Princess,' said the Queen to me, 'at your time of
life you must not give yourself up entirely to the dead. You wrong the
living. We have not been sent into the world for ourselves. I have felt
much for your situation, and still do so, and therefore hope, as long as
the weather permits, that you will favour me with your company to enlarge
our sledge excursions. The King and my dear sister Elizabeth are also
much interested about your coming on a visit to Versailles. What think
you of our plan.

"I thanked Her Majesty, the King, and the Princess, for their kindness,
but I observed that my state of health and mind could so little
correspond in any way with the gratitude I should owe them for their
royal favours that I trusted a refusal would be attributed to the fact of
my consciousness how much rather my society must prove an annoyance and a
burthen than a source of pleasure.

"My tears flowing down my cheeks rapidly while I was speaking, the Queen,
with that kindness for which she was so eminently distinguished, took me
by the hand, and with her handkerchief dried my face.

"'I am,' said the Queen, I about to renew a situation which has for some
time past lain dormant; and I hope, my dear Princess, therewith to
establish my own private views, in forming the happiness of a worthy
individual.'

"I replied that such a plan must insure Her Majesty the desired object
she had in view, as no individual could be otherwise than happy under the
immediate auspices of so benevolent and generous a Sovereign.

"The Queen, with great affability, as if pleased with my observation,
only said, 'If you really think as you speak, my views are accomplished.'

"My carriage was announced, and I then left Her Majesty, highly pleased
at her gracious condescension, which evidently emanated from the kind
wish to raise my drooping spirits from their melancholy.

"Gratitude would not permit me to continue long without demonstrating to
Her Majesty the sentiments her kindness had awakened in my heart.

"I returned next day with my sister-in-law, the Duchesse d'Orleans, who
was much esteemed by the Queen, and we joined the sledge parties with Her
Majesty.

"On the third or fourth day of these excursions I again had the honour to
dine with Her Majesty, when, in the presence of the Princesse Elizabeth,
she asked me if I were still of the same opinion with respect to the
person it was her intention to add to her household?

"I myself had totally forgotten the topic and entreated Her Majesty's
pardon for my want of memory, and begged she would signify to what
subject she alluded.

"The Princesse Elizabeth laughed. 'I thought,' cried she, 'that you had
known it long ago! The Queen, with His Majesty's consent, has nominated
you, my dear Princess (embracing me), superintendent of her household.'

"The Queen, also embracing me, said, 'Yes; it is very true. You said the
individual destined to such a situation could not be otherwise than
happy; and I am myself thoroughly happy in being able thus to contribute
towards rendering you so.'

"I was perfectly at a loss for a moment or two, but, recovering myself
from the effect of this unexpected and unlooked for preferment, I thanked
Her Majesty with the best grace I was able for such an unmerited mark of
distinction.

"The Queen, perceiving my embarrassment, observed, 'I knew I should
surprise you; but I thought your being established at Versailles much
more desirable for one of your rank and youth than to be, as you were,
with the Duc de Penthievre; who, much as I esteem his amiable character
and numerous great virtues, is by no means the most cheering companion
for my charming Princess. From this moment let our friendships be united
in the common interest of each other's happiness.'

"The Queen took me by the hand. The Princesse Elizabeth, joining hers,
exclaimed to the Queen, 'Oh, my dear sister! let me make the trio in
this happy union of friends!'

"In the society of her adored Majesty and of her saint-like sister
Elizabeth I have found my only balm of consolation! Their graciously
condescending to sympathise in the grief with which I was overwhelmed
from the cruel disappointment of my first love, filled up in some degree
the vacuum left by his loss, who was so prematurely ravished from me in
the flower of youth, leaving me a widow at eighteen; and though that loss
is one I never can replace or forget, the poignancy of its effect has
been in a great degree softened by the kindnesses of my excellent
father-in-law, the Duc de Penthievre, and the relations resulting from my
situation with, and the never-ceasing attachment of my beloved royal
mistress."




SECTION VII.


[The connexion of the Princesse de Lamballe with the Queen, of which she
has herself described the origin in the preceding chapter, proved so
important in its influence upon the reputation and fate of both these
illustrious victims, that I must once more withdraw the attention of the
reader, to explain, from personal observation and confidential
disclosures, the leading causes of the violent dislike which was kindled
in the public against an intimacy that it would have been most fortunate
had Her Majesty preferred through life to every other.

The selection of a friend by the Queen, and the sudden elevation of that
friend to the highest station in the royal household, could not fail to
alarm the selfishness of courtiers, who always feel themselves injured by
the favour shown to others. An obsolete office was revived in favour of
the Princesse de Lamballe. In the time of Maria Leckzinska, wife of
Louis XV., the office of superintendent, then held by Mademoiselle de
Clermont, was suppressed when its holder died. The office gave a control
over the inclinations of Queens, by which Maria Leckzinska was sometimes
inconvenienced; and it had lain dormant ever since. Its restoration by a
Queen who it was believed could be guided by no motive but the desire to
seek pretexts for showing undue favour, was of course eyed askance, and
ere long openly calumniated.

The Comtesse de Noailles, who never could forget the title the Queen gave
her of Madame Etiquette, nor forgive the frequent jokes which Her Majesty
passed upon her antiquated formality, availed herself of the opportunity
offered by her husband's being raised to the dignity of Marshal of
France, to resign her situation on the appointment of the Princesse de
Lamballe as superintendent. The Countess retired with feelings
embittered against her royal mistress, and her annoyance in the sequel
ripened into enmity. The Countess was attached to a very powerful party,
not only at Court but scattered throughout the kingdom. Her discontent
arose from the circumstance of no longer having to take her orders from
the Queen direct, but from her superintendent. Ridiculous as this may
seem to an impartial observer, it created one of the most powerful
hostilities against which Her Majesty had afterwards to contend.

Though the Queen esteemed the Comtesse de Noailles for her many good
qualities, yet she was so much put out of her way by the rigour with
which the Countess enforced forms which to Her Majesty appeared puerile
and absurd, that she felt relieved, and secretly gratified, by her
retirement. It will be shown hereafter to what an excess the Countess
was eventually carried by her malice.

One of the popular objections to the revival of the office of
superintendent in favour of the Princesse de Lamballe arose from its
reputed extravagance. This was as groundless as the other charges
against the Queen. The etiquettes of dress, and the requisite increase
of every other expense, from the augmentation of every article of the
necessaries as well as the luxuries of life, made a treble difference
between the expenditure of the circumscribed Court of Maria Leckzinska
and that of Louis XVI.; yet the Princesse de Lamballe received no more
salary than had been allotted to Mademoiselle de Clermont in the selfsame
situation half a century before.

(And even that salary she never appropriated to any private use of her
own, being amply supplied through the generous bounty of her
father-in-law, the Duc de Penthievre; and latterly, to my knowledge, so
far from receiving any pay, she often paid the Queen's and Princesse
Elizabeth's bills out of her own purse.)

So far from possessing the slightest propensity either to extravagance in
herself or to the encouragement of extravagance in others, the Princesse
de Lamballe was a model of prudence, and upon those subjects, as indeed
upon all others, the Queen could not have had a more discreet counsellor.
She eminently contributed to the charities of the Queen, who was the
mother of the fatherless, the support of the widow, and the general
protectress and refuge of suffering humanity. Previously to the purchase
of any article of luxury, the Princess would call for the list of the
pensioners: if anything was due on that account, it was instantly paid,
and the luxury dispensed with.

She never made her appearance in the Queen's apartments except at
established hours. This was scrupulously observed till the Revolution.
Circumstances then obliged her to break through forms. The Queen would
only receive communications, either written or verbal, upon the subjects
growing out of that wretched crisis, in the presence of the Princess; and
hence her apartments were open to all who had occasion to see Her
Majesty. This made their intercourse more constant and unceremonious.
But before this, the Princess only went to the royal presence at fixed
hours, unless she had memorials to present to the King, Queen, or
Ministers, in favour of such as asked for justice or mercy. Hence,
whenever the Princess entered before the stated times, the Queen would
run and embrace her, and exclaim: "Well, my dear Princesse de Lamballe!
what widow, what orphan, what suffering or oppressed petitioner am I to
thank for this visit? for I know you never come to me empty-handed when
you come unexpectedly!" The Princess, on these occasions, often had the
petitioners waiting in an adjoining apartment, that they might instantly
avail themselves of any inclination the Queen might show to see them.

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