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

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"The expense of the insulting scene, which had so overcome Her Majesty,
was five hundred thousand francs! This sum was paid by the agents of the
Palais Royal, and its execution entrusted principally to Mirabeau,
Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, and another individual, who was afterwards
brought over to the Court party.

"The history of the Assembly itself on the day following, the 6th of May,
is too well known. The sudden perturbation of a guilty conscience, which
overcame the Duc d'Orleans, seemed like an awful warning. He had
scarcely commenced his inflammatory address to the Assembly, when some
one, who felt incommoded by the stifling heat of the hall, exclaimed,
'Throw open the windows!' The conspirator fancied he heard in this his
death sentence. He fainted, and was conducted home in the greatest
agitation. Madame de Bouffon was at the Palais Royal when the Duke was
taken thither. The Duchesse d'Orleans was at the palace of the Duc de
Penthievre, her father, while the Duke himself was at the Hotel Thoulouse
with me, where he was to dine, and where we were waiting for the Duchess
to come and join us, by appointment. But Madame de Bouffon was so
alarmed by the state in which she saw the Duc d'Orleans that she
instantly left the Palais Royal, and despatched his valet express to
bring her thither. My sister-in-law sent an excuse to me for not coming
to dinner, and an explanation to her father for so abruptly leaving his
palace, and hastened home to her husband. It was some days before he
recovered; and his father-in-law, his wife, and myself were not without
hopes that he would see in this an omen to prevent him from persisting
any longer in his opposition to the Royal Family.

"The effects of the recall of the popular Minister, Necker, did not
satisfy the King. Necker soon became an object of suspicion to the Court
party, and especially to His Majesty and the Queen. He was known to have
maintained an understanding with D'ORLEANS. The miscarriage of many
plans and the misfortunes which succeeded were the result of this
connection, though it was openly disavowed. The first suspicion of the
coalition arose thus:

"When the Duke had his bust carried about Paris, after his unworthy
schemes against the King had been discovered, it was thrown into the
mire. Necker passing, perhaps by mere accident, stopped his carriage,
and expressing himself with some resentment for such treatment to a
Prince of the blood and a friend of the people, ordered the bust to be
taken to the Palais Royal, where it was washed, crowned with laurel, and
thence, with Necker's own bust, carried to Versailles. The King's aunts,
coming from Bellevue as the procession was upon the road, ordered the
guards to send the men away who bore the busts, that the King and Queen
might not be insulted with the sight. This circumstance caused another
riot, which was attributed to Their Majesties. The dismission of the
Minister was the obvious result. It is certain, however, that, in
obeying the mandate of exile, Necker had no wish to exercise the
advantage he possessed from his great popularity. His retirement was
sudden and secret; and, although it was mentioned that very evening by
the Baroness de Stael to the Comte de Chinon, so little bustle was made
about his withdrawing from France, that it was even stated at the time to
have been utterly unknown, even to his daughter.

"Necker himself ascribed his dismission to the influence of the De
Polignacs; but he was totally mistaken, for the Duchesse de Polignac was
the last person to have had any influence in matters of State, whatever
might have been the case with those who surrounded her. She was devoid
of ambition or capacity to give her weight; and the Queen was not so
pliant in points of high import as to allow herself to be governed or
overruled, unless her mind was thoroughly convinced. In that respect,
she was something like Catharine II., who always distinguished her
favourites from her Minister; but in the present case she had no choice,
and was under the necessity of yielding to the boisterous voice of a
faction.

"From this epoch, I saw all the persons who had any wish to communicate
with the Queen on matters relative to the public business, and Her
Majesty was generally present when they came, and received them in my
apartments. The Duchesse de Polignac never, to my knowledge, entered
into any of these State questions; yet there was no promotion in the
civil, military, or ministerial department, which she has not been
charged with having influenced the Queen to make, though there were few
of them who were not nominated by the King and his Ministers, even
unknown to the Queen herself.

"The prevailing dissatisfaction against Her Majesty and the favourite De
Polignac now began to take so many forms, and produce effects so
dreadful, as to wring her own feelings, as well as those of her royal
mistress, with the most intense anguish. Let me mention one gross and
barbarous instance in proof of what I say.

"After the birth of the Queen's second son, the Duc de Normandie, who was
afterwards Dauphin, the Duke and Duchess of Harcourt, outrageously
jealous of the ascendency of the governess of the Dauphin, excited the
young Prince's hatred toward Madame de Polignac to such a pitch that he
would take nothing from her hands, but often, young as he was at the
time, order her out of the apartment, and treat her remonstrances with
the utmost contempt. The Duchess bitterly complained of the Harcourts to
the Queen; for she really sacrificed the whole of her time to the care
and attention required by this young Prince, and she did so from sincere
attachment, and that he might not be irritated in his declining state of
health. The Queen was deeply hurt at these dissensions between the
governor and governess. Her Majesty endeavoured to pacify the mind of
the young Prince, by literally making herself a slave to his childish
caprices, which in all probability would have created the confidence so
desired, when a most cruel, unnatural, I may say diabolical, report
prevailed to alienate the child's affections even from his mother, in
making him believe that, owing to his deformity and growing ugliness, she
had transferred all her tenderness to his younger brother, who certainly
was very superior in health and beauty to the puny Dauphin. Making a
pretext of this calumny, the governor of the heir-apparent was malicious
enough to prohibit him from eating or drinking anything but what first
passed through the hands of his physicians; and so strong was the
impression made by this interdict on the mind of the young Dauphin that
he never after saw the Queen but with the greatest terror. The feelings
of his disconsolate parent may be more readily conceived than described.
So may the mortification of his governess, the Duchesse de Polignac,
herself so tender, so affectionate a mother. Fortunately for himself,
and happily for his wretched parents, this royal youth, whose life,
though short, had been so full of suffering, died at Versailles on the
4th of June, 1789, and, though only between seven and eight years of age
at the time of his decease, he had given proofs of intellectual
precocity, which would probably have made continued life, amidst the
scenes of wretchedness, which succeeded, anything to him but a blessing.

"The cabals of the Duke of Harcourt, to which I have just adverted,
against the Duchesse de Polignac, were the mere result of foul malice and
ambition. Harcourt wished to get his wife, who was the sworn enemy of De
Polignac, created governess to the Dauphin, instead of the Queen's
favourite. Most of the criminal stories against the Duchesse de
Polignac, and which did equal injury to the Queen, were fabricated by the
Harcourts, for the purpose of excluding their rival from her situation.

"Barnave, meanwhile, continued faithful to his liberal principles, but
equally faithful to his desire of bringing Their Majesties over to those
principles, and making them republican Sovereigns. He lost no
opportunity of availing himself of my permission for him to call whenever
he chose on public business; and he continued to urge the same points,
upon which he had before been so much in earnest, although with no better
effect. Both the King and the Queen looked with suspicion upon Barnave,
and with still more suspicion upon his politics.

"The next time I received him, 'Madame,' exclaimed the deputy to me,
'since our last interview I have pondered well on the situation of the
King; and, as an honest Frenchman, attached to my lawful Sovereign, and
anxious for his future prosperous reign, I am decidedly of opinion that
his own safety, as well as the dignity of the crown of France, and the
happiness of his subjects, can only be secured by his giving his country
a Constitution, which will at once place his establishment beyond the
caprice and the tyranny of corrupt administrations, and secure hereafter
the first monarchy in Europe from the possibility of sinking under weak
Princes, by whom the royal splendour of France has too often been debased
into the mere tool of vicious and mercenary noblesse, and sycophantic
courtiers. A King, protected by a Constitution, can do no wrong. He is
unshackled with responsibility. He is empowered with the comfort of
exercising the executive authority for the benefit of the nation, while
all the harsher duties, and all the censures they create, devolve on
others. It is, therefore, madame, through your means, and the well-known
friendship you have ever evinced for the Royal Family, and the general
welfare of the French nation, that I wish to obtain a private audience of
Her Majesty, the Queen, in order to induce her to exert the never-failing
ascendency she has ever possessed over the mind of our good King, in
persuading him to the sacrifice of a small proportion of his power, for
the sake of preserving the monarchy to his heirs; and posterity will
record the virtues of a Prince who has been magnanimous enough, of his
own free will, to resign the unlawful part of his prerogatives, usurped
by his predecessors, for the blessing and pleasure of giving liberty to a
beloved people, among whom both the King and Queen will find many
Hampdens and Sidneys, but very few Cromwells. Besides, madame, we must
make a merit of necessity. The times are pregnant with events, and it is
more prudent to support the palladium of the ancient monarchy than risk
its total overthrow; and fall it must, if the diseased excrescences, of
which the people complain, and which threaten to carry death into the
very heart of the tree, be not lopped away in time by the Sovereign
himself.'

"I heard the deputy with the greatest attention. I promised to fulfil
his commission. The better to execute my task, I retired the moment he
left me, and wrote down all I could recollect of his discourse, that it
might be thoroughly placed before the Queen the first opportunity.

"When I communicated the conversation to Her Majesty, she listened with
the most gracious condescension, till I came to the part wherein Barnave
so forcibly impressed the necessity of adopting a constitutional
monarchy. Here, as she had done once before, when I repeated some former
observations of Barnave to her, Marie Antoinette somewhat lost her
equanimity. She rose from her seat, and exclaimed:

"'What! is an absolute Prince, and the hereditary Sovereign of the
ancient monarchy of France, to become the tool of a plebeian faction, who
will, their point once gained, dethrone him for his imbecile
complaisance? Do they wish to imitate the English Revolution of 1648,
and reproduce the sanguinary times of the unfortunate and weak Charles
the First? To make France a commonwealth! Well! be it so! But before I
advise the King to such a step, or give my consent to it, they shall bury
me under the ruins of the monarchy.'

"'But what answer,' said I, 'does Your Majesty wish me to return to the
deputy's request for a private audience?'

"'What answer?' exclaimed the Queen. No answer at all is the best answer
to such a presumptuous proposition! I tremble for the consequences of
the impression their disloyal manoeuvres have made upon the minds of the
people, and I have no faith whatever in their proffered services to the
King. However, on reflection, it may be expedient to temporise. Continue
to see him. Learn, if possible, how far he may be trusted; but do not
fix any time, as yet, for the desired audience. I wish to apprise the
King, first, of his interview with you, Princess. This conversation does
not agree with what he and Mirabeau proposed about the King's recovering
his prerogatives. Are these the prerogatives with which he flattered the
King? Binding him hand and foot, and excluding him from every privilege,
and then casting him a helpless dependant on the caprice of a volatile
plebeian faction! The French nation is very different from the English.
The first rules of the established ancient order of the government broken
through, they will violate twenty others, and the King will be
sacrificed, before this frivolous people again organise themselves with
any sort of regular government.'

"Agreeably to Her Majesty's commands, I continued to see Barnave. I
communicated with him by letter,' at his private lodgings at Passy, and
at Vitry; but it was long before the Queen could be brought to consent to
the audience he solicited.

[Of these letters I was generally the bearer. I recollect that day
perfectly. I was copying some letters for the Princesse de Lamballe,
when the Prince de Conti came in. The Prince lived not only to see, but
to feel the errors of his system. He attained a great age. He outlived
the glory of his country. Like many others, the first gleam of political
regeneration led him into a system, which drove him out of France, to
implore the shelter of a foreign asylum, that he might not fall a victim
to his own credulity. I had an opportunity of witnessing in his latter
days his sincere repentance; and to this it is fit that I should bear
testimony. There were no bounds to the execration with which he expressed
himself towards the murderers of those victims, whose death he lamented
with a bitterness in which some remorse was mingled, from the impression
that his own early errors in favour of the Revolution had unintentionally
accelerated their untimely end. This was a source to him of deep and
perpetual self-reproach.

There was an eccentricity in the appearance, dress, and manners of the
Prince de Conti, which well deserves recording.

He wore to the very last--and it was in Barcelona, so late as 1803, that
I last had the honour of conversing with him--a white rich stuff dress
frock coat, of the cut and fashion of Louis XIV., which, being without
any collar, had buttons and button-holes from the neck to the bottom of
the skirt, and was padded and stiffened with buckram. The cuffs were
very large, of a different colour, and turned up to the elbows. The
whole was lined with white satin, which, from its being very much
moth-eaten, appeared as if it had been dotted on purpose to show the
buckram between the satin lining. His waistcoat was of rich green striped
silk, bound with gold lace; the buttons and buttonholes of gold; the
flaps very large, and completely covering his small clothes; which
happened very apropos, for they scarcely reached his knees, over which he
wore large striped silk stockings, that came half-way up his thighs. His
shoes had high heels, and reached half up his legs; the buckles were
small, and set round with paste. A very narrow stiff stock decorated his
neck. He carried a hat, with a white feather on the inside, under his
arm. His ruffles were of very handsome point lace. His few gray hairs
were gathered in a little round bag. The wig alone was wanting to make
him a thorough picture of the polished age of the founder of Versailles
and Marly.

He had all that princely politeness of manner which so eminently
distinguished the old school of French nobility, previous to the
Revolution. He was the thorough gentleman, a character by no means so
readily to be met with in these days of refinement as one would imagine.
He never addressed the softer sex but with ease and elegance, and
admiration of their persons.

Could Louis XIV. have believed, had it been told to him when he placed
this branch of the Bourbons on the throne of Iberia, that it would one
day refuse to give shelter at the Court of Madrid to one of his family,
for fear of offending a Corsican usurper!]

"Indeed, Her Majesty had such an aversion to all who had declared
themselves for any innovation upon the existing power of the monarchy,
that she was very reluctant to give audience upon the subject to any
person, not even excepting the Princes of the blood. The Comte d'Artois
himself, leaning as he did to the popular side, had ceased to be welcome.
Expressions he had made use of, concerning the necessity for some change,
had occasioned the coolness, which was already of considerable standing.

"One day the Prince de Conti came to me, to complain of the Queen's
refusing to receive him, because he had expressed himself to the same
effect as had the Comte d'Artois on the subject of the Tiers Etat.

"'And does Your Highness,' replied I, 'imagine that the Queen is less
displeased with the conduct of the Comte d'Artois on that head than she
is with you, Prince? I can assure Your Highness, that at this moment
there subsists a very great degree of coolness between Her Majesty and
her royal brother-in-law, whom she loves as if he were her own brother.
Though she makes every allowance for his political inexperience, and well
knows the goodness of his heart and the rectitude of his intentions, yet
policy will not permit her to change her sentiments.'

"'That may be,' said the Prince, 'but while Her Majesty continues to
honour with her royal presence the Duchesse de Polignac, whose friends,
as well as herself, are all enthusiastically mad in favour of the
constitutional system, she shows an undue partiality, by countenancing
one branch of the party and not the other; particularly so, as the great
and notorious leader of the opposition, which the Queen frowns upon, is
the sister-in-law of this very Duchesse de Polignac, and the avowed
favourite of the Comte d'Artois, by whom, and the councils of the Palais
Royal, he is supposed to be totally governed in his political career.'

"'The Queen,' replied I, 'is certainly her own mistress. She sees, I
believe, many persons more from habit than any other motive; to which,
Your Highness is aware, many Princes often make sacrifices. Your
Highness cannot suppose I can have the temerity to control Her Majesty,
in the selection of her friends, or in her sentiments respecting them.'

"'No,' exclaimed the Prince, 'I imagine not. But she might just as well
see any of us; for we are no more enemies of the Crown than the party she
is cherishing by constantly appearing among them; which, according to her
avowed maxims concerning the not sanctioning any but supporters of the
absolute monarchy, is in direct opposition to her own sentiments.

"'Who,' continued His Highness, 'caused that infernal comedy, 'Le Mariage
de Figaro', to be brought out, but the party of the Duchesse de Polignac?

[Note of the Princesse de Lamballe:--The Prince de Conti never could
speak of Beaumarchais but with the greatest contempt. There was
something personal in this exasperation. Beaumarchais had satirized the
Prince. 'The Spanish Barber' was founded on a circumstance which
happened at a country house between Conti and a young lady, during the
reign of Louis XV., when intrigues of every kind were practised and
almost sanctioned. The poet has exposed the Prince by making him the
Doctor Bartolo of his play. The affair which supplied the story was
hushed up at Court, and the Prince was punished only by the loss of his
mistress, who became the wife of another.]

The play is a critique on the whole Royal Family, from the drawing up of
the curtain to its fall. It burlesques the ways and manners of every
individual connected with the Court of Versailles. Not a scene but
touches some of their characters. Are not the Queen herself and the
Comte d'Artois lampooned and caricatured in the garden scenes, and the
most slanderous ridicule cast upon their innocent evening walks on the
terrace? Does not Beaumarchais plainly show in it, to every impartial
eye, the means which the Comtesse Diane has taken publicly to demonstrate
her jealousy of the Queen's ascendency over the Comte d'Artois? Is it
not from the same sentiment that she roused the jealousy of the Comtesse
d'Artois against Her Majesty?'

"'All these circumstances,' observed I, 'the King prudently foresaw when
he read the manuscript, and caused it to be read to the Queen, to
convince her of the nature of its characters and the dangerous tendency
likely to arise from its performance. Of this Your Highness is aware. It
is not for me to apprise you that, to avert the excitement inevitable
from its being brought upon the stage, and under a thorough conviction of
the mischief it would produce in turning the minds of the people against
the Queen, His Majesty solemnly declared that the comedy should not be
performed in Paris; and that he would never sanction its being brought
before the public on any stage in France.'

"'Bah! bah! madame!' exclaimed De Conti. The Queen has acted like a
child in this affair, as in many others. In defiance of His Majesty's
determination, did not the Queen herself, through the fatal influence of
her favourite, whose party wearied her out by continued importunities,
cause the King to revoke his express mandate? And what has been the
consequence of Her Majesty's ungovernable partiality for these De
Polignacs?'

"'You know, Prince,' said I, 'better than I do.'

"'The proofs of its bad consequences,' pursued His Highness, 'are more
strongly verified than ever by your own withdrawing from the Queen's
parties since her unreserved acknowledgment of her partiality (fatal
partiality!) for those who will be her ruin; for they are her worst
enemies.'

"'Pardon me, Prince,' answered I, 'I have not withdrawn myself from the
Queen, but from the new parties, with whose politics I cannot identify
myself, besides some exceptions I have taken against those who frequent
them.'

"'Bah! bah!' exclaimed De Conti, 'your sagacity has got the better of
your curiosity. All the wit and humour of that traitor Beaumarchais
never seduced you to cultivate his society, as all the rest of the
Queen's party have done.'

"'I never knew him to be accused of treason.'

"'Why, what do you call a fellow who sent arms to the Americans before
the war was declared, without his Sovereign's consent?'

"'In that affair, I consider the Ministers as criminal as himself; for
the Queen, to this day, believes that Beaumarchais was sanctioned by them
and, you know, Her Majesty has ever since had an insuperable dislike to
both De Maurepas and De Vergennes. But I have nothing to do with these
things.'

"'Yes, yes, I understand you, Princess. Let her romp and play with the
'compate vous',--[A kind of game of forfeits, introduced for the
diversion of the royal children and those of the Duchesse de
Polignac.]--but who will 'compatire' (make allowance for) her folly?
Bah! bah! bah! She is inconsistent, Princess. Not that I mean by this to
insinuate that the Duchess is not the sincere friend and well-wisher of
the Queen. Her immediate existence, her interest, and that of her
family, are all dependent on the royal bounty. But can the Duchess
answer for the same sincerity towards the Queen, with respect to her
innumerable guests? No! Are not the sentiments of the Duchesses
sister-in-law, the Comtesse Diane, in direct opposition to the absolute
monarchy? Has she not always been an enthusiastic advocate for all those
that have supported the American war? Who was it that crowned, at a
public assembly, the democratical straight hairs of Dr. Franklin? Why
the same Madame Comtesse Diane! Who was 'capa turpa' in applauding the
men who were framing the American Constitution at Paris? Madame Comtesse
Diane! Who was it, in like manner, that opposed all the Queen's
arguments against the political conduct of France and Spain, relative to
the war with England, in favour of the American Independence? The
Comtesse Diane! Not for the love of that rising nation, or for the sacred
cause of liberty; but from a taste for notoriety, a spirit of envy and
jealousy, an apprehension lest the personal charms of the Queen might rob
her of a part of those affections, which she herself exclusively hoped to
alienate from that abortion, the Comtesse d'Artois, in whose service she
is Maid of Honour, and handmaid to the Count. My dear Princess, these
are facts proved. Beaumarchais has delineated them all. Why, then,
refuse to see me? Why withdraw her former confidence from the Comte
d'Artois, when she lives in the society which promulgates antimonarchical
principles? These are sad evidences of Her Majesty's inconsistency. She
might as well see the Duc d'Orleans'

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