The Sun King (29 page)

Horrible stories went the rounds, for instance, of starving children found by a magistrate huddling under the body of their father, who had hanged himself. People stayed indoors sooner than see the faces in the street, black with hunger. Public and private finances were in a desperate way; the currency lost a third of its value in a few months; the famous financier Samuel Bernard was declared bankrupt, in spite of backing from the exchequer. The King asked people to give up their silver, either to send it as a loan to his goldsmith, M. de Launay, or to sell it to the mint. Launay was to keep a list and when times improved the King would give back the weight of the metal and the permission (which in those days was always required) to make it up. In short it would be an advantage to the lender, since eventually he would have silver of the very latest style. Only about a hundred sent to Launay;
more sold outright, especially dirty old family silver which was out of fashion. Many bought pottery and used it ostentatiously while hiding their silver. The King himself melted his gold plate and ate off silver gilt. He made a few other economies: indeed he was obliged to — he did not know where to turn for cash. He seemed completely unmoved, and declared that the balls and parties must go on as usual. But the Duchesse de Bourgogne, plunged in sadness, put a stop to them.

Mansart's beautiful chapel at Versailles was practically finished and the King went every day to see Coypel painting the ceiling. Mme de Maintenon, who never thought that Versailles would survive Louis XIV, and who cared not a rap for works of art, did her best to stop any more expenditure on the house and especially on this chapel, but fortunately she was not heeded. It is rather a pity that the famous sermons of the reign were preached either in one of the two temporary chapels at Versailles or at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, so that the visitor to the existing chapel cannot conjure up Bossuet, pointing at Louise de La Vallière, fit to sink through the floor, and booming out:
Vide hanc mulierem
!, or preaching the great funeral orations on Henrietta of England and Condé. Or Massillon: ‘It's not the sovereign but the law, Sire, which must reign over the people; you are only the Prime Minister.' Or Mascaron, bravest of all: ‘A conqueror is not better than a thief.' And it was not here that the King frowned furiously at giggling courtiers, to double up himself with laughter when the joke was repeated to him after the service; nor here that some wag gave out that His Majesty would not be coming to evensong, so that when he did he was amazed to find exactly three people in the congregation. This chapel only served for the five, sad last years of his life. Mr Dunlop, in his book on Versailles, says quite rightly that the tour of the château ought to end, instead of beginning, with the chapel. Its plain white stone purposely affords a contrast with the gilded bronze and coloured marbles of the state rooms; it is of Gothic inspiration, calm and religious. One hopes that the King found comfort there in the trials that lay ahead.

After the appalling winter of 1709, Louis XIV realized that he must sue for peace. Having made various preliminary moves, he was still negotiating when the season for resuming hostilities opened with the indecisive battle of Malplaquet and the loss of Mons. The Grand Alliance, thinking that France was beaten to her knees, proposed terms of unexampled severity which the King felt obliged to accept. But then they went too far. It was not enough that Louis XIV should give up Alsace, destroy the fortifications of his frontier cities, including Dunkirk, give Lille, Tournai, Ypres, Menin, Furnes, Condé and Maubeuge to the Dutch and recognize the Archduke Charles as King of Spain. They also insisted that the French Army should be used to chase Philip V off his throne. When this was explained to the King he said ‘Since I must go on fighting I would rather it were against my enemies than my grandchildren.' Then he appealed to his people. The Allied demands were sent to the
governors of all his provinces and published in the churches. The result was an extraordinary upsurge of patriotism; men flocked to the colours. The Spaniards, too, were still fighting like demons for Philip — heroes of resistance, said the French; a rascally foot militia, said General Stanhope. Feeling that both he and his grandson had the moral support of their subjects, Louis XIV decided to continue the war. His courage was to be amply rewarded.

For half a century Frenchmen had assumed that, at the death of Louis XIV, they would be governed by the Grand Dauphin. In 1711 the King, though in excellent health, was over seventy while his son, though no longer young, had hardly ever known a day's illness. The Dauphin's heir was a young man with two brothers and two little boys of his own. Louis used to say that the succession to the French throne had not been so well assured for hundreds of years. The schemers and plotters who always surround pinnacles of power were divided into two factions, looking either to the Dauphin or to Bourgogne. It was not possible to be well with both of them: the two men disliked each other to such a point that the Dauphin's entourage had taken Vendôme's side after Oudenarde. Those who paid their court to the father had an eye on the immediate future, whereas the son stood for the present, through his wife's influence over Louis XIV, and the more distant future when he would reign. In a way this seemed the better investment, especially as the Dauphin led a curiously enclosed life, mostly at Meudon, into which it was not easy to penetrate. His companions were his wife Mlle de Choin, fatter and squashier than ever, and his two sisters, the once beautiful Princesse de Conti and the ever adorable Mme la Duchesse. Even among his intimates the Dauphin spoke so little that it seemed as if he counted his words, only allowing himself a limited number — impossible to tell if he were pleased or displeased or how much or how little he knew of public events. He certainly knew what went on in the countryside, and though so submissive and timid with the King he was among those few who dared to broach the unpopular topic of the peasant and his dreadful lot. He got a resounding snub for his pains. His servants were devoted to him and so were his two younger sons. Mlle de Choin must have loved him since she got no advantage whatever from her position except that of sitting in an armchair, when the Duchesse de Bourgogne only had a footstool at Meudon, and referring to her as ‘la Duchesse' instead of ‘Mme la Duchesse de Bourgogne'. Mlle de Choin was not interested in politics, dressed like a poor person and did not own a carriage; she used to go from Paris to rejoin the Dauphin at Meudon, when he had been absent, in a hackney cab. She slept in the state bedroom next to his but when the King visited Meudon she was
relegated to an
entresol
. She and Mme de Maintenon (the two sultanas, as Saint-Simon called them) were on pretty good terms. But Mme de Maintenon despised the Meudon set and was very much afraid that Mme la Duchesse would take the Duchesse de Bourgogne's rightful place when the Dauphin succeeded to the throne.

The speculations, cabals and intrigues round father and son, which occupied the Court for years and gave Saint-Simon material for some of his most telling pages, represented a total waste of time. In 1711 the Grand Dauphin fell ill with smallpox, at Meudon. He held his own and presently seemed to be out of the wood. Saint-Simon describes a conversation he had with the Duchesse d'Orléans when the news from Meudon was much better. Both he and she were against the Dauphin; he admired Bourgogne and she was jealous of her sister Mme la Duchesse. In the same funny, languishing family voice, in which her mother once told Mme Voisin that she only had time for one black mass, the Duchesse d'Orléans said it really was bad luck that the Dauphin, at his age (fifty-three) and fat as he was, seemed to be getting over such a dangerous illness — those wretched doctors were so careful not to forget the smallest little remedy that he could hardly help recovering. One might have hoped for a nice apoplexy but there — unfortunately he had been following a strict diet for the last year or so. In short, it looked as if they had better make up their minds to a long life and reign for their enemy. While they were going on like this at Versailles, the Dauphin's heart, strained by constant blood-letting and purges, gave way and he died so suddenly that he only just had time to receive absolution from a
curé
who had happened to look in.

The King, who had been at Meudon from the beginning of the illness, was having his supper. He was stunned by the unexpected news and ran to his son's room, but the Princess de Conti and Mme la Duchesse, who had done the nursing, forcibly prevented him from going in. When he knew for certain that all was over, he sent word to Versailles that he would go to Marly and would like to have a word with the Duchesse de Bourgogne if she would meet him in the town on his way through. The news of the death went round Versailles like lightning; and, with a curious, instinctive, crowd movement and the terrible noise of a stampede, the courtiers ran from all over the château to the Bourgognes' apartment. The Duchess, whose face gave nothing away, picked up a shawl and went down the Queen's staircase to her coach. She sat in it between the two stables and had not long to wait before the King arrived; she got down and was going to him when Mme de Maintenon put her head out of the window, crying ‘What are you doing, Madame? Don't come near us, we are infectious.' So Marie-Adélaïde went back to the château. She found her husband, with the Berris, as she had left them, seated most uncomfortably in the middle of a huge, curious crowd. Berri, who was truly sad, was crying and sobbing. Bourgogne, white as a sheet, put on no false sentiments, but was visibly shaken to
find himself suddenly so near the throne. Husband and wife whispered together for a long time. The Duc d'Orléans cried like anything, and when Saint-Simon asked him why, since he and the Dauphin had long been estranged, he said, almost apologetically, that the Dauphin was a good man whom he had known all his life — perhaps his grief would not last long but he was his first cousin, blood was thicker than water and he felt the sorrow in his bowels. Madame, dressed up as for a party (she had not got a dressing-gown), and looking very odd since everybody else was in
déshabillé
, was howling at the top of her voice. The Duc de Beauvilliers, cold and impassive, stood by the Dauphin's two sons keeping the crowd at a certain distance. This extraordinary scene went on from midnight until 7 a.m. when Beauvilliers said it was time to go to bed and they all retired, but only for an hour or two.

The next day the Bourgognes went to join the King at Marly where precautions against infection had been taken — those who came from Meudon had changed their clothes and herbs were burnt all over the house. The saddest person there was the Princesse de Conti; she fell so ill with sorrow that she had to be confessed. The King went to her bedroom, where he had not been for a long time as it was up a steep staircase; he noticed that various improvements would make it more comfortable and these were soon put in hand. For many years the Dauphin had not been specially nice to Marie-Anne: she had had to swallow the pill of his marrying a woman she had dismissed from her own household, and Mme la Duchesse had managed to make her feel out of it. But she was a faithful soul, possibly rather thick-skinned, like her mother, to whom she had always been so good and who had died some months before the Dauphin. Marie-Anne had done her best to make the King go and say goodbye to his old love but Mme de Maintenon would not allow it. She went herself, instead.

Mme la Duchesse was in despair, but her tears were more for her lover than for her brother. The tragedy of Conti's death was harder to bear than ever, now that, having lost the Dauphin and on bad terms with the Bourgognes, she found herself a lone widow with many young children and no protector. Had Conti lived, and done well at the war as he surely would have, she would have shared in his glory and had a solid support to lean on. She had always been his permanent attachment; he loved her deeply in spite of many other affairs both natural and unnatural; and he was her only love. As things had turned out she was almost inclined to regret M. le Duc, terrifying though he was at the end of his life. However, Mme la Duchesse was not made for sorrow and soon put it from her. She took up with a monkey-faced Marquis de Lassay and lived with him, quite openly after the death of her father, for another thirty years. Mlle de Choin lived until 1730. The Dauphin had once shown her a will he had made leaving her a huge fortune, but she had torn it up saying that if he was there she needed nothing, if she lost him a tiny income would suffice. The King saw to it that she was
comfortably off. Her widowhood was spent modestly, she was given over to good works and saw her friends but eschewed society.

The Duc de Bourgogne was now the Dauphin. His father's death changed him amazingly; he lost his shyness and his disapproving look and became affable and easy. He attended all the Councils, received ministers and generals and prepared himself for the huge destiny which lay ahead. He had none of the faults which older people thought typical of his generation; he was grave and virtuous; not a pleasure-seeker; polite to everybody, and unlike his grandfather he understood the gradations of rank in the French aristocracy. He became popular with the notables, a popularity which soon spread to all sections of the community. Oudenarde and Lille were forgotten; Bourgogne, his fascinating wife and pretty little boys were placed on a pedestal and almost worshipped. This current of feeling reacted on the King himself who, for the first time in his life, began to delegate a substantial part of his work. The ministers were encouraged to meet in the Dauphin's apartment; he was informed of everything that happened. He went to Paris, where the King had not set foot for four years, and was enthusiastically received there.

The new Dauphine had become quite staid and dignified; she began to hold a court in her own apartment instead of dashing here and there for her amusements. Mme de Maintenon wrote: ‘After having been preached at for bringing her up badly and blamed by everybody for her flightiness, after having seen her hated at the Court because she would not talk to people, after having known that she was accused of horrible dissimulation on account of her attachment to the King and the goodness with which she honoured me, I now find that everybody sings her praises.'