International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

Et ne vois pas la mienne.

Louis XV. had, as we see, his moments of poetical inspiration. Anacreon could not have sung better than this.

Madame de Pompadour, born in the ranks of the people, and seating herself unceremoniously on the throne of Blanche of Castille—Madame de Pompadour, protecting philosophers and suppressing Jesuits, treating the great powers of the earth with the same sans façon as she did artists and men of letters,—was one of the thousand causes, petty and, trifling in themselves, which eventually accelerated the great French Revolution. Madame Dubarry but imitated her predecessor when she called a noble duke a sapajou (ape). The mot is pretty well known: "Annoncez le sapajou de Madame la Comtesse Dubarry," said a great lord of the court of Louis XV. one day. It would be a curious and most amusing task to enrich the French peerage with all the sobriquets bestowed by the mistresses of Louis XV. as titles of nobility upon the courtiers of Versailles. More than one illustrious name, which has been cited by France with pride, has lost its luster in the tainted atmosphere of Versailles.

"Not only," said Madame de Pompadour; one day to the Abbé de Bernis,—"not only have I all the nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawnings." In short, Madame de Pompadour reigned so imperiously, that once at Versailles, about the conclusion of dinner, an old man approached the king, and begged him to have the goodness to recommend him to Madame de Pompadour. All present laughed heartily at this conceit; except, however, the marchioness.

Madame de Maintenon had not more difficulty in amusing Louis XIV. when grown old and devout, than had Madame de Pompadour in diverting his successor, who, though still young, seemed like a man who had exhausted all the pleasures and enjoyments of life. About the time when the marchioness used to transform herself into milkmaids and peasant girls, she commenced building a very romantic hermitage in the park of Versailles, on the outskirts of the wood near the Saint Germain's road: viewed from without it seemed a true hermitage, worthy in all points of an anchorite's abode; but within it was a dwelling more suited to some old roué of the Regency. Vanloo, Boucher, and Latour had covered the walls and ceilings with all the images of pagan art. The garden was a chef d'oeuvre; it was a grove rather than a garden; a grove peopled with statues, intersected by a multitude of winding paths and alleys, and abounding with a number of arbors, recesses, and "shady blest retreats." In the middle of the garden there was a farm—a true model-farm—with its cattle, goats, and sheep, and all the paraphernalia of husbandry. The marchioness presided daily at the construction of this hermitage.

"Where are you going, marchioness?" Louis XV. would say on seeing her going out so frequently.

"Sire," she would reply, "I am building myself a hermitage for my old age. You know I am rather devout: I shall end my days in solitude."

"Yes," replied the king, "like all those who have loved deeply, or who have been loved deeply."

About the time when spring gives place to the first advances of summer; when the trees were in leaf, and the plants in flower; when the bright greensward, enameled with its countless flowrets, carpeted the alleys of the park, Madame de Pompadour one morning begged Louis XV. to come and breakfast with her at the hermitage.

The king was conducted thither by his valet. His surprise was great. At first, before entering, at the sight of the humble thatched roof, he imagined that he was about to breakfast like a true anchorite, and began to fear seriously that the marchioness had not displayed much taste in the adornment of her retreat. He entered the court and proceeded straight to the door of the hermitage. At this instant a young peasant girl advanced to meet him; as she was well made, delicate, and pretty looking, the king began to find the hermitage more to his taste. With deep reverence his guide begged of him to follow her to the farm.

As he approached the farm, another peasant girl, more delicate still than the former, advanced to meet him, and, with a thousand reverences, presented him with a bowl of milk. At the sight of this pretty milkmaid, with her little straw hat coquettishly disposed on one side of her head, her white corset and blue petticoat, the king was charmed. Before taking the milk from her hands, he gazed at her a second time from head to foot. Her arms, which were uncovered, were white as lilies; she wore suspended from her neck a little gold cross, which seemed to lose itself in a magnificent bouquet of flowers which she wore in her bosom; but what above all astonished the king were two little stockingless feet incased in a pair of the most rustic sabots. With a motion of innocent coquetry, the pretty milkmaid drew one of her feet out of its wooden prison and placed it on the sabot. All at once the king recognized the marchioness, and avowed to her that for the first time in his life he had felt the desire of kissing a pretty foot. Madame de Pompadour returned with her royal lover to the hermitage, where he could not sufficiently admire the refined taste which had been displayed by the fair architect in the planning and arrangement of the building and grounds. This was the origin of what was afterward known as the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs.

It would be a difficult matter to study the political system of Madame de Pompadour, if, indeed, she can be said to have acted on a system. It cannot be denied that she possessed ideas, but more frequently her mind was a perfect chaos of caprices. It is well known, however, that the Duc de Choiseul, who united in his own person the portfolios of three departments of the ministry, and who disposed of all power, followed to the letter the policy of Madame de Pompadour; namely, in reversing the system of Louis XIV., in allying himself to Austria, and in forming a league, or rather a family pact, between the Bourbons of France, Italy, and Spain. The policy of Madame de Pompadour it was which annexed Corsica to France, and, consequently, Bonaparte, who was born at the decease of the marchioness, owed to her his title of French citizen.

Women look not to the future; their reign is from day to day; women of genius, who have at various epochs sought to govern the world, have never contemplated the clouds which might be gathering in the distance; they have been able to see clearly enough within a narrow circle traced around them, but have never succeeded in piercing the shadows of futurity. "Après moi le déluge," was Madame de Pompadour's motto.

The eighteenth century was a century of striking contrasts. The prime minister after Cardinal de Fleury was Madame de Pompadour. With the cardinal a blind religion protected the throne against the parliament; with the rise of the marchioness's power we perceive the first dawnings of philosophy, tormenting in turns both the clergy and the parliament. Under Madame de Pompadour's direction the king, had he been only as bold and determined as his mistress, would have become a greater king than ever. The cardinal was miserly and avaricious, the marchioness liberal to prodigality; she always said, and justly too, that money ought to flow freely from the throne like a generous stream, fertilizing and humanizing the entire State. The cardinal had been hostile to Austria, and favorable to Prussia; the marchioness made war with Frederick to humor Marie-Thérèse. The battle of Rosbach certainly belied her policy, but, to use her own words, "Had she the privilege of making heroes?"

And after all, is the historian justified in accusing this woman of all the dishonors and defeats of the reign of Louis XV.? She attained to power just as the old legitimate royalty—the royalty, as the French would call it, par la grace de Dieu—was fast giving way before the royalty of opinion. There was nothing left to be done at Versailles, simply because in Paris the power was already in the hands of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot. And so well did Madame de Pompadour comprehend this future royalty, that far from seeking to arrest its progress, she, on the contrary, sought to meet it half way. For we do not find her openly protecting and encouraging the philosophers of the day; those very men who, by the mere force of ideas, were destined to overthrow that throne on which she herself was seated! Thus we find also the various painters of the time, in their several portraits of the favorite, never failing to represent her surrounded with all the more celebrated revolutionary books of the day, such as the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophical Dictionary, the Spirit of Laws, and the Social Contract.

Madame de Pompadour, woman-like, loved revenge; and this, it must be said, was her worst vice. For a word she sent Latude to the Bastille; for a couplet she exiled the minister Maurepas. Frederick of Prussia took it into his head one day, in a moment of gayety, to call her Cotillon II., instead of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, and styled her reign of favor le régne de Cotillon; a witticism which so incensed her, that, according to some writers, we may trace to this petty cause the origin of the disastrous seven years' war.

The position of Madame de Pompadour at court as first favorite was, by all accounts, far from being an enviable one; as years rolled on she found herself necessitated to stoop to all kinds of meannesses, and to endure all sorts of humiliations, to preserve her already tottering empire. In order to make friends for herself in the parliament, she suppressed the Jesuits; and she afterward exiled the parliament in order to conciliate the clergy. Again, to prevent her royal, but most fickle minded lover, from choosing another mistress out of the ranks of the court ladies, she contrived that seraglio, the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs, "the pillow of Louis the Fifteenth's debaucheries," as Chateaubriand called it; at the last, hated and despised by all France, Madame de Pompadour said to Louis XV., "For mercy's sake, keep me near you: I protect you; I take upon myself all the hatred of France; evil times are come for kings; so soon as I am gone, all the insults which are now leveled at Madame de Pompadour will be addressed to the king."

Among the many desperate attempts which were made from time to time to dethrone her, the following is the most curious:—

M. d'Argenson and Madame d'Estrade had resolved upon raising to the throne of the favorite the young and beautiful Madame de Choiseul, wife of the court usher. The intrigue was conducted with so much art that the king granted an interview. At the hour fixed upon for the meeting a great agitation reigned in the cabinet of the minister. M. d'Argenson and Madame d'Estrade awaited the event with anxiety; Quesnai, physician to the king and to the favorite, was also present. All at once Madame de Choiseul rushed into the room; Madame d'Estrade ran to meet her with open arms.

"Well!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," replied Madame de Choiseul; "I am loved; she is going to be dismissed. He has given me his royal word on it."

A burst of joy resounded through the cabinet. Quesnai was, as we know, the friend of Madame de Pompadour; but he was at the same time the friend of Madame d'Estrade. M. d'Argenson imagined that in this revolution he would remain neuter at least, but he was mistaken.

"Doctor," said he, "nothing changes for you; we trust that you will remain with us."

"Monsieur le Comte," coldly replied Quesnai, rising from his seat, "I have been attached to Madame de Pompadour in her prosperity, and I shall remain so in her disgrace;" and so saying he left the room.

This Quesnai, of whom we have just made mention, was a man of uncouth and rustic manners, a true Danubian peasant. He inhabited a little entresol above the apartments of Madame de Pompadour at Versailles, where he would pass the whole of his time absorbed in schemes of political economy. Quesnai, however, did not want for friends, as he could boast of the esteem of all the most illustrious philosophers of the day. For those persons who did not go to court would come once a month to dine with the court physician. Marmontel, in his Memoirs, relates that he has dined there in company with Diderot, D'Alembert, Duclos, Helvetius, Turgot, and Buffon,—a goodly array of intellect. Thus on the ground floor they deliberated on peace and war, on the choice of ministers, the suppression of the Jesuits, the exile of the parliament, and the future destinies of France; while above stairs those who had not power, but who possessed ideas, labored unwittingly at the future destinies of the world. What was concocted in the rez-de-chaussée was demolished in the entresol. It would frequently happen, too, that Madame de Pompadour who could not receive the guests of Quesnai in her own apartments, would ascend to those of her physician to see and chat with them.

Every Sunday morning Madame de Pompadour received at her toilet all the artists, literary men, and great personages of the court, who had the entrée of her apartments. Marmontel relates that on the arrival of Duclos and De Bernis, who never missed a single Sunday, she would say to the first, with a light air, "Bon jour, Duclos;" to the second, with an air and voice more amiable, "Bon jour, abbé:" accompanying her words occasionally with a little tap on his cheek. Artists and men of letters were invariably better received than the titled courtiers of France; while many of the nobility were truly lords-in-waiting, the two Vanloos, De la Tour, Boucher, and Cochin, had never to remain in the antechamber. The account of her first and only interview with Crebillon is interesting. Some one had informed her that the old tragic poet was living in the Marais, surrounded by his cats and dogs, in a state of poverty and neglect. "What say you!" she exclaimed; "in poverty and neglect?" She ran to seek the king, and asked for a pension for the poet of one hundred louis a-year from her privy purse. When Crebillon came to Versailles to thank her, she was in bed. "Let him come in," she exclaimed, "that I may see the gray-headed genius." At the sight of the fine old man—Crebillon was then eighty years of age—so poor and yet so proud, she was affected to tears. She received him with so touching a grace that the old poet was deeply moved. As he leaned over the bed to kiss her hand, the king appeared. "Ah, madame," exclaimed Crebillon, "the king has surprised us! I am lost!" This sally amused Louis XV. vastly; Crebillon's success was decided.

Madame de Pompadour passed her last days in a state of deep dejection. As she was now in the decline both of her favor and of her reign, she no longer had friends; even the king himself, though still submitting to her guidance, loved her no more. The Jesuits, too, whom she had driven from court, overwhelmed her with letters, in which they strove to depict to her the terrors of everlasting punishment.[18 - The fear of losing her power, and of becoming once more a bourgeoise of Paris, perpetually tormented her. After she had succeeded in suppressing the Jesuits, she fancied she beheld in each monk of the order as assassin and a poisoner.—Mémoires historiques de la Cour de France.] Every hour that struck seemed to toll for her the death-knell of all her hopes and joys. On her first appearance at court, proud of her youth, her beauty, and her brilliant complexion, she had proscribed rouge and patches, saying that life was not a masked ball. She had now reached that sad period of life when she would be compelled to choose between rouge or the first wrinkles of incipient old age. "I shall never survive it," she used to say, mournfully,

One night, during the year 1760, she was seized with a violent trembling, and sitting up in bed, called Madame du Hausset.

"I am sure," she said, "I am going to die. Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Chateauroux both died as young as myself: it is a species of fatality which strikes all those who have loved the king. What I regret least is life,—I am weary of flatteries and insults, of friendships and hatreds; but I own to you that I am terrified at the idea of being cast into some ditch or other, whether it be by the clergy, by Monseigneur the Dauphin, or by the people of Paris."

Madame du Hausset took her hands within her own, and assured her that if France had the misfortune to lose her, the king would not fail to give her a burial worthy of her rank and station.

"Alas!" rejoined Madame de Pompadour, "a burial worthy of me!—when we recollect that Madame de Mailly, repenting of having been his first mistress, desired to be interred in the cemetery of the Innocents; and not only that, but even under the common water-pipe."

She passed the night in tears. On the following morning, however, she resumed a little courage, and hastened to call to her aid all the resources of art to conceal the first ravages of time; but in vain did she seek to recover that adorable smile which twenty years before had made Louis XV. forget that he was King of France.

From this time forth she showed herself in Paris no more; and at court she would only appear by candle-light, and then in the apparel of a Queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, her arms covered with bracelets, and wearing a magnificent Indian robe, embroidered with gold and silver. She was always the beautiful Marchioness de Pompadour, but a closer inspection would show that the lovely face of former days was now but a made-up face, still charming, but like a restored painting, showing evident symptoms of having been here and there effaced and retouched. It was in the mouth that she first lost her beauty. She had in early life acquired the habit of biting her lips to conceal her emotions, and at thirty years of age her mouth had lost all its vivid brilliancy of color.

Some persons have stated that Madame de Pompadour died from the effects of poison, administered either by the Jesuits, who never ceased persecuting her with anonymous letters, or by her enemies at Versailles; but this story is not deserving of credit. Most persons are agreed that Madame de Pompadour died simply because she was five and forty years of age; and owing as she did all her power but to the charm of her beauty, its loss she was unable to survive. She suffered for a length of time in silence, hiding ever under a pallid smile the death she already felt in her heart. At length she took to her bed—that bed from which she was fated to rise no more. She was then at the Chateau of Choisy; neither the king nor his courtiers imagined that her disease was serious, but she herself well knew that her hour was come. She entreated the king to have her removed to Versailles; she wished to die upon the throne of her glory—to die as a queen in the royal palace, still issuing her orders to the troop of servile courtiers who were accustomed to wait humbly at her footstool.

Like Diana de Poitiers, Gabrielle d'Estrées, and Madame de Maintenon, she died in April. The curé of the Madeleine was present during her last moments. As the old man was preparing to retire, after giving her the benediction, she rallied for a moment, for she was then almost dead, and said to him, "Wait a bit, Monsieur le Curé, we will go together." These were her last words.

Up to this time the king had testified at least the semblance of friendship and gratitude toward Madame de Pompadour, but no sooner had she breathed her last than he began to consider how he could, in the speediest manner possible, get rid of her mortal remains. He gave immediate orders for the removal of the body to her house in Paris. As the conveyance was about to start, the king, who was standing at one of the windows of the Chateau, seeing a violent hailstorm breaking over Versailles, said, with a smile, half sad, half ironical, "The marchioness will have bad weather for her journey!"

That same day Madame de Pompadour's will was opened in his presence. Although she had long since been far from his heart, he could not restrain a tear at the reading of the document.

The marchioness, in her will, had forgotten none of her friends, nor any of her servants; the king himself was named. "I entreat the king," she wrote, "to accept the gift I make him of my hôtel in Paris, in order that it may become the palace of one of his children: it is my desire that it may become the residence of Monseigneur le Comte de Provence." This hotel of Madame de Pompadour has since then been inhabited by illustrious hosts, for it is better known at the present day under the designation of the Elysée Bourbon, or rather the Elysée National.

Madame de Pompadour had several residences: she had received from the king an hôtel at Paris and one at Fontainebleau; the estate of Crecy, the château of Aulnay, Brimborion sur Bellevue, the seigniories of Marigny and of Saint-Rémy; an hotel at Compiegne, and one at Versailles; without counting the millions of francs in money bestowed at various times in addition to her regular income, for they never counted francs at Verseilles then.[19 - Except Louis XV., who, it is said, used to amuse himself by making a private treasury. When he lost at play, he used always to pay out of the royal treasury.] For all this, we find Louis XV. giving the Marquis de Marigny, her brother, an order for two hundred and thirty thousand francs, to assist him in paying the debts of the marchioness. (Journal of Louis XV., published at the trial of Louis XVI.)

The marchioness was interred in a vault of the church of the Capuchins; by dint of interest and money her family had obtained the privilege of having a funeral oration pronounced over her mortal remains. This oration was a chef d'oeuvre, which ought most certainly to have been preserved for the honor of the Church. Unfortunately, this curious and most remarkable piece of eloquence was never printed, and history has inscribed but a few lines in its annals. When the priest approached the bier, he sprinkled the holy water, made the sign of the cross, and commenced his discourse in the following terms:—"I receive the body of the most high and powerful lady, Madame le Marquise de Pompadour, maid of honour to the queen. She was in the school of all virtues," &c. The remainder of this most edifying discourse is lost in oblivion, but surely the force of humbug could no further go.

Montesquieu's prediction concerning two remarkable personages of the eighteenth century (Voltaire and Madame de Pompadour) is curious,—curious alike for its truth, and for the knowledge of the world displayed by it.

One day, while on a visit to Ferney, Montesquieu being alone in Voltaire's magnificent saloon, which opened on the Lake of Geneva, was surprised by Marshal Richelieu (who had come over from Lyons to see how Voltaire would play in the Orphan of China) standing in deep thought before a pair of portraits which hung upon the wall.

"Well, Monsieur le President," said he, "you are studying, I perceive, Wit and Beauty."

"Wit and Beauty, Marshal!" replied Montesquieu; "you see before you the portraits of a man and a woman who will be the representatives of our century."

And has not this prediction of Montesquieu's been in some sort fulfilled?—Historians have styled the seventeenth century the century of Louis XIV. Could not the eighteenth be with more justice designated the century of Voltaire and Madame de Pompadour? For if these two characters be carefully studied, the entire spirit of the age will in them be found faithfully depicted.

But, O vanity of vanities! Madame de Pompadour, with all her wit, and grace, and beauty, after having strutted and fretted her little hour on life's fitful stage, has vanished from the theater of the world into utter oblivion, leaving, literally speaking, scarcely a trace behind. In the words of Diderot we may ask, "What now remains of this woman, the dispenser of millions, who overthrew the entire political system of Europe, and left her country dishonored, powerless, and impoverished, both in mind and resources? The Treaty of Versailles, which will last as long as it can; a statue by Bouchardon, which will be always admired; a few stones engraved by Gay, which will astonish a future generation of antiquarians; a pretty little picture by Vanloo; and a handful of ashes."

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    From Eliza Cook's Journal.

THE CHURCH OF THE VASA D'AGUA

One very hot evening, in the year 1815, the curate of San Pedro, a village distant but a few leagues from Seville, returned very much fatigued to his poor home; his worthy housekeeper, Senora Margarita, about seventy years of age, awaited him. However much any one might have been accustomed to distress and privation among the Spanish peasantry, it was impossible not to be struck with the evidence of poverty in the house of the good priest. The nakedness of the walls, and scantiness of the furniture, were the more apparent, from a certain air about them of better days. Senora Margarita had just prepared for her master's supper an olla podrida, which notwithstanding the sauce, and high sounding name, was nothing more than the remains of his dinner, which she had disguised with the greatest skill. The curate, gratified at the odor of this savory dish, exclaimed,—