Louis XV.'s involuntary exclamation when he first set eyes on the loveliness of Madame de la Tournelle, "Heavens! how beautiful she is!"
becomes intel igible when we look on Nattier's picture of this fairest of the de Nesle sisters in his "Allegory of the Daybreak," and read the contemporary descriptions of her charms.
"She ravished the eye," we are told, "with her skin of dazzling whiteness, her elegant carriage, her free gestures, the enchanting glance of her big blue eyes--a gaze of which the cunning was veiled by sentiment--by the smile of a child, moist lips, a bosom surging, heaving, ever agitated by the flux and reflux of life, by a physiognomy at once passionate and mutinous." And to these seductions were added a sunny temperament, an infectious gaiety of spirit, and a playful wit which made her infinitely attractive to men much less susceptible that the amorous Louis.
It is little wonder then that in the reaction which followed his stormy grief for his dead love, the Comtesse de Vintimille, he should turn from the lachrymose companionship of Madame de Mailly to bask in the sunshine of this third of the beautiful sisters, Madame de la Tournel e, and that the wish to possess her should fire his blood. But Madame de la Tournel e was not to prove such an easy conquest as her two sisters, who had come almost unasked to his arms.
At the time when she came thus dramatically into his life she was living with Madame de Mazarin, a strong-minded woman who had no cause to love Louis, who had thwarted and opposed him more than once, and who was determined at any cost to keep her protegee and pet out of his clutches.
And his desires had also two other stout opponents in Cardinal Fleury, his old mentor, and Maurepas, the most subtle and clever of his ministers, each of whom for different reasons was strongly averse to this new and dangerous liaison, which would make him the tool of Richelieu's favourite and Richelieu's party.
Thus, for months, Louis found himself baffled in all his efforts to win the prize on which he had set his heart until, in September, 1742, one formidable obstacle was removed from his path by the death of Madame de Mazarin. To Madame de la Tournel e the loss of her protectress was little short of a calamity, for it left her not only homeless, but practical y penniless; and, in her extremity, she natural y turned hopeful eyes to the King, of whose passion she was well aware. At least, she hoped, he might give her some position at his Court which would rescue her from poverty. When she begged Maurepas, Madame de Mazarin's kinsman and heir, to appeal to the King on her behalf, his answer was to order her and her sister, Madame de Flavacourt, to leave the Hotel Mazarin, thus making her plight still more desperate.
But, fortunately, in this hour of her greatest need she found an unexpected friend in Louis' ill-used Queen, who, ignorant of her husband's infatuation for the beautiful Madame de la Tournelle, sent for her, spoke gracious words of sympathy to her, and announced her intention of instal ing her in Madame de Mazarin's place as a lady of the palace. Thus did fortune smile on Madame just when her future seemed darkest. But her troubles were by no means at an end. Fleury and Maurepas were more determined than ever that the King should not come into the power of a woman so al uring and so dangerous; and they exhausted every expedient to put obstacles in her path and to discover and support rival claimants to the post.
For once, however, Louis was adamant. He had not waited so long and feverishly for his prize to be baulked when it seemed almost in his grasp. Madame de la Tournel e should have her place at his Court, and it would not be his fault if she did not soon fill one more exalted and intimate. Thus it was that when Fleury submitted to him the list of applicants, with la Tournel e's name at the bottom, he promptly re-wrote it at the head of the list, and handed it back to the Cardinal with the words, "The Queen is decided, and wishes to give her the place."
We can picture Madame de Mailly's distress and suspense while these negotiations were proceeding. She had, as we have seen in the previous chapter, been supplanted by one sister in the King's affection; and just as she was recovering some of her old position in his favour, she was threatened with a second dethronement by another sister. In her alarm she flew to Madame de la Tournel e, to set her fears at rest one way or the other. "Can it be possible that you are going to take my place?" she asked, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Quite impossible, my sister," answered Madame, with a smile; and Madame de Mailly, thus reassured, returned to Versailles the happiest woman in France--to learn, a few days later, that it was not only possible, it was an accomplished fact. For the second time, and now, as she knew wel , final y, she was ousted from the affection of the King she loved so sincerely; and again it was a sister who had done her this grievous wrong. She was determined, however, that she would not quit the field without a last fight, and she knew she had doughty champions in Fleury and Maurepas, who still refused to acknowledge defeat.
Although Madame de la Tournelle was now instal ed in the palace, the day of Louis' conquest had not arrived. The gratification of his passion was still thwarted in several directions. Not only was Madame de Mailly's presence a difficulty and a reproach to him; his new favourite was by no means willing to respond to his advances. Her heart was still engaged to the Due d'Agenois, and was not hers to dispose of. Richelieu, however, was quick to dispose of this difficulty. He sent the handsome Duc to Languedoc, exposed him to the attractions of a pretty woman, and before many weeks had passed, was able to show Madame de la Tournel e passionate letters addressed to her rival by her lover, as evidence of the worthlessness of his vows; thus arming her pride against him and disposing her at last to lend a more favourable ear to the King.
As for Madame de Mailly, her shrift was short. In spite of her tears, her pleadings, her caresses, Louis made no concealment of his intention to be rid of her. "No sorrow, no humiliation was lacking in the death-struggle of love. The King spared her nothing. He did not even spare her those harsh words which snap the bonds of the most vulgar liaisons." And the climax came when he told the heart-broken woman, as she cringed pitifully at his feet, "You must go away this very day." "My sacrifices are finished," she sobbed, a little later to the "Judas,"
Richelieu, when, with friendly words, he urged her to humour the King and go away at least for a time; "it will be my death, but I will be in Paris to-night."
And while Madame de Mailly was carrying her crushed heart through the darkness to her exile, the King and Richelieu, disguised in large perukes and black coats, were stealing across the great courtyards to the rooms of Madame de la Tournelle, where the King's long waiting was to have its reward. And, the fol owing day, the usurper was cal ously writing to a friend, "Doubtless Meuse will have informed you of the trouble I had in ousting Madame de Mailly; at last I obtained a mandate to the effect that she was not to return until she was sent for."
"No portrait," says de Goncourt, referring to this letter, "is to be compared with such a confession. It is the woman herself with the cynicism of her hardness, her shameless and cold-blooded ingratitude....
It is as though she drives her sister out by the two shoulders with those words which have the coarse energy of the lower orders."
Louis, at last happy in the achievement of his desire, was not long in discovering that in the third of the Nesle sisters he had his hands more ful than with either of her predecessors. Madame de Mailly and the Comtesse de Vintimille had been content to play the role of mistress, and to receive the King's none too lavish largesse with gratitude.
Madame de la Tournelle was not so complaisant, so easily satisfied. She intended--and she lost no time in making the King aware of her intention--to have her position recognised by the world at large, to reign as Montespan had reigned, to have the Treasury placed at her disposal, and her children, if she had any, made legitimate. Her last stipulation was that she should be made a Duchess before the end of the year. And to all these proposals Louis gave a meek assent.
To show further her independence, she soon began to drive her lover to distraction by her caprices and her temper: "She tantalised, at once rebuffed and excited the King by the most adroit comedies and those coquetries which are the strength of her sex, assuring him that she would be delighted if he would transfer his affection to other ladies."
And while the favourite was thus revel ing in the insolence of her conquest, her supplanted sister was eating out her heart in Paris. "Her despair was terrible; the trouble of her heart refused consolation, begged for solitude, found vent every moment in cries for Louis. Those who were around her trembled for her reason, for her life.... Again and again she made up her mind to start for the Court, to make a final appeal to the King, but each time, when the carriage was ready, she burst into tears and fell back upon her bed."
As for Louis, chilled by the coldness of his mistress, distracted by her whims and rages, his heart often yearned for the woman he had so cruel y discarded; and separation did more than all her tears and caresses could have done, to awake again the love he fancied was dead.
When Madame de la Tournelle paid her first visit as _Maitresse en titre_
to Choisy, nothing would satisfy her but an escort of the noblest ladies in France, including a Princess of the Blood. Her progress was that of a Queen; and in return for this honour, wrung out of the King's weakness, she repaid him with weeks of coldness and ill-humour. She refused to play at _cavagnol_ with him; she barricaded herself in her room, refusing to open to all her lover's knocking; and vented her vapours on him with, or without, provocation, until, as she considered, she had reduced him to a becoming submission. Then she used her power and her coquetries to wheedle out of him one concession after another, including a promise by the King to return unopened any letters Madame de Mailly might send to him. Nor was she content until her sister was final y disposed of by the grant of a smal pension and a modest lodging in the Luxembourg.
Before the year closed Madame de la Tournel e was instal ed in the most luxurious apartments at Versailles, and Louis, now completely caught in her toils, was the slave of her and his senses, flinging himself into all the licence of passion, and reviving the nightly debauches from which the dead Comtesse had weaned him. And while her lover was thus steeped in sensuality, his mistress was, with infinite tact, pursuing her ambition. Affecting an indifference to affairs of State, she was gradual y, and with seeming reluctance, worming herself into the position of chief Counsel or, and while professing to despise money she was draining the exchequer to feed her extravagance.
Never was King so hopelessly in the toils of a woman as Louis, the wel -beloved, in those of Madame de la Tournel e. He accepted as meekly as a child al her coldness and caprices, her jealousies and her rages; and was ideal y happy when, in a gracious mood, she would allow him to assist at her toilette as the reward for some regal present of diamonds, horses, or gowns.
It was after one such privileged hour that Louis, with childish pleasure, handed to his favourite the patent, creating her Duchesse de Chateauroux, enclosed in a casket of gold; and with it a rapturous letter in which he promised her a pension of eighty-thousand livres, the better to maintain her new dignity!
Having thus achieved her greatest ambition, the Duchesse (as we must now call her) aspired to play a leading part in the affairs of Europe.
France and Prussia were leagued in war against the forces of England, Austria, and Hol and. This was a seductive game in which to take a hand, and thus we find her stimulating the sluggard kingliness in her lover, urging him to leave his debauches and to lead his armies to victory, assuring him of the gratitude and admiration of his subjects. Nothing less, she told him, would save his country from disaster.
To this appeal and temptation Louis was not slow to respond; and in May, 1744, we find him, to the delight of his soldiers and all France, at the seat of war, reviewing his troops, speaking words of high courage to them, visiting hospitals and canteens, and actual y sending back a haughty message to the Dutch: "I will give you your answer in Flanders."
No wonder the army was roused to enthusiasm, or that it exclaimed with one voice, "At last we have found a King!"
So strong was Louis in his new martial resolve that he actual y refused Madame de Chateauroux permission to accompany him. France was delighted that at last her King had emancipated himself from petticoat influence, but the delight was short-lived, for before he had been many days in camp the Duchesse made her stately appearance, and saws and hammers were at work making a covered way between the house assigned to her and that occupied by the King. A fortnight later Ypres had fal en, and she was writing to Richelieu, "This is mighty pleasant news and gives me huge pleasure. I am overwhelmed with joy, to take Ypres in nine days.
You can think of nothing more glorious, more flattering to the King; and his great-grandfather, great as he was, never did the like!"
But grief was coming quickly on the heels of joy. The King was seized with a sudden and serious illness, after a banquet shared with his ally, the King of Prussia; and in a few days a malignant fever had brought him face to face with death. Madame de Chateauroux watched his sufferings with the eyes of despair. "Leaning over the pillow of the dying man, aghast and trembling, she fights for him with sickness and death, terror and remorse." With locked door she keeps her jealous watch by his bedside, al owing none to enter but Richelieu, the doctors, and nurses, whilst outside are gathered the Princes of the Blood and the great officers of the Court, clamouring for admittance.
It was a grim environment for the death-bed of a King, this struggle for supremacy, in which a frail woman defied the powers of France for the monopoly of his last hours. And chief of all the terrors that assailed her was the dread of that climax to it all, when her lover would have to make his last confession, the price of his absolution being, as she wel knew, a final severance from herself.
Over this protracted and unseemly duel, in which blows were exchanged, entrance was forced, and Princes and ministers crowded indecently around the King's bed; over the Duchesse's tearful pleadings with the confessor to spare her the disgrace of dismissal, we must hasten to the crowning moment when Louis, feeling that he was dying, hastily summoned a confessor, who, a few moments later, flung open the door of the closet in which the Duchesse was waiting and weeping, and pronounced the fatal words, "The King commands you to leave his presence immediately."
Then followed that secret flight to Paris, "amidst a torrent of maledictions," the Duchesse hiding herself from view as best she could, and at each town and village where horses were changed, slinking back and taking refuge in some by-road until she could resume her journey.
Then it was that in her grief and despair she wrote to Richelieu, "Oh, my God! what a thing it all is! I give you my word, it is al over with me! One would need to be a poor fool to start it all over again."
But Louis was by no means a dead man. From the day on which he received absolution from his manifold sins he made such haste to recover that, within a month, he was wel again and eager to fly to the arms of the woman he had so abruptly abandoned with al other earthly vanities. It was one thing, however, to dismiss the Duchesse, and quite another to call her back. For a time she refused point-blank to look again on the King who had spurned her from fear of hel ; and when at last she consented to receive the penitent at Versailles she let him know, in no vague terms, that "it would cost France too many heads if she were to return to his Court."
Vengeance on her enemies was the only price she would accept for forgiveness, and this price Louis promised to pay in liberal measure.
One after the other, those who had brought about her humiliation were sent to disgrace or exile--from the Duc de Chatillon to La Rochefoucauld and Perusseau. Maurepas, the most virulent of them al , the King declined to exile, but he consented to a compromise. He should be made to offer Madame an abject apology, to grovel at her feet, a punishment with which she was content. And when the great minister presented himself by her bedside, in fear and trembling, to express his profound penitence and to beg her to return to Court, all she answered was, "Give me the King's letters and go!"
The following Saturday she fixed on as the day of her triumphant return--"but it was death that was to raise her from the bed on which she had received the King's submission at the hands of his Prime Minister." Within twenty-four hours she was seized with violent convulsions and delirium. In her intervals of consciousness she shrieked aloud that she had been poisoned, and called down curses on her murderer--Maurepas. For eleven days she passed from one delirious attack to another, and as many times she was bled. But al the skill of the Court physicians was powerless to save her, and at five o'clock in the morning of the 8th December the Duchesse drew her last tortured breath in the arms of Madame de Mailly, the sister she had so cruel y wronged.
Two days later, de Goncourt tells us, she was buried at Saint Sulpice, an hour before the customary time for interments, her coffin guarded by soldiers, to protect it from the fury of the mob.
As for Madame de Mailly, she spent the last years of her troubled life in the odour of a tardy sanctity--washing the feet of the poor, ministering to the sick, bringing consolation to those in prison; and she was laid to rest amongst the poorest in the Cimetiere des Innocents, wearing the hair-shirt which had been part of her penance during life, and with a simple cross of wood for all monument.