Madame de Pompadour (25 page)

The King enjoined a ban of silence on the subject of the recent controversy, and the prelates were advised to lie low for a bit. But the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, was not an accommodating man. When the King appointed him, in 1745, he did not at first want to accept. In those days he was said to have a sweet, and even timid, nature; if so he had hardened up considerably. He was the most implacable enemy of the
Encyclopédie
and hated Madame de Pompadour so much that he said he would like to see her burnt; he refused her permission to reserve the sacraments in her chapel at the Elysée. Very soon he broke the King’s ban of silence and refused extreme unction to yet another old dying Jansenist.

The King, taking no notice of his family, who filled the palace with their moans and groans, exiled the Archbishop to his country house, 3 December 1754. Three days later the
Parlement
registered taxes to the tune of a hundred million
livres
.

‘That,’ they said, ‘is the end of the Bull.’

‘Unfortunately, though,’ said the King, as he once more imposed silence on the subject, ‘the Bull happens to be the law of the land.’

The sacraments continued to be refused; the next victim of note was the Duchess of Perth. However, it transpired that her husband had been one of the convulsionists of St Médard, a church which
had
been shut by the King when the convulsions there were forbidden in 1732.

De par le Roi, défense à Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu
.

(‘By order of the King, God is forbidden to perform miracles on this spot’ was written by some wag on the church door.) So the case of the Duchess was allowed to drop, but others came up almost every day and in every part of the country. Between the years 1751–56, Barbier, the Parisian notary and diarist, who always reported parliamentary doings in his journal, has nothing to record but the intensely dreary details of this squabble. Not a thought is given to foreign or colonial affairs; all of every page is devoted to the Bull, the refusal of sacraments,
remontrances
from
Parlement
to King, his replies, burning of books by the public executioners, and pastoral letters. Even the Duc de Luynes turns his attention from details of court usage to those of Jansenist deathbeds.

All the Bishops were not as intransigent as Christophe de Beaumont, and in May 1755 the Assembly of the Clergy met in Paris to decide once and for all whether non-submission to the Bull necessarily meant separation from the Church. The Bishops were divided on the question and the King resolved to ask the Pope for a ruling. This delicate matter was entrusted to Stainville, now ambassador in Rome; it was his first big political opportunity and one of which he made the most. He received his instructions from Versailles via the Marquise, with whom he was in constant correspondence.

‘I madly love the Holy Father,’ she wrote, ‘and I hope my prayers are efficacious as I pray for him every day. What he said about the
billets de confession
is worthy of a pastor who wishes for peace …
They
seem to be satisfied with your services. M. de Machault is thin and altered. I am doing all I can to be instructed about the well-being of the State.’ In the intervals of thanking for cameos and asking for a piece of the True Cross, and the price of a rose diamond in which to set it – finally she put it in a crystal heart with a cross of rose diamonds – she explained to him that he must
somehow
get a statement out of the Pope which would, without repudiating the previous Bull, uphold the freedom of the French Church.

Benedict XIV was an enlightened and scholarly man, very much admired by Voltaire. He had already written to Cardinal de Tencin suggesting that the French clergy might occupy itself with useful and edifying works rather than spend its time squabbling over
ragazzate
. He and Stainville were on excellent, even joking terms, and understood each other perfectly. On one occasion when Stainville, always very emphatic, was laying down the law, the Pope rose from his throne, and pointing to it he said: ‘Perhaps you would like to sit here?’ Between them they drew up an encyclical, which limited the refusal of the sacraments, but maintained that the bishops had an ultimate right to refuse. ‘In order to avoid a scandal, the priest must warn the dying, suspected of Jansenism, that they will be damned, and then give them communion at their own risk and peril.’

This encyclical displeased the extremists on both sides; neither the
Parlement
nor the Jesuits wanted to accept it. On 13 December 1756, the King, however, went to the
Palais de Justice
, which he was legally entitled to do, and registered the encyclical. He also registered an edict of submission to himself by which he removed certain powers from the two courts known as
Enquêtes
and
Requêtes
. Their members immediately went on strike as a protest. The encyclical served its purpose, as far as Jansenist deathbeds were concerned, and from now on they ceased to occupy the attention of the whole country. The King had scored a distinct triumph. He was satisfied with the part played by Stainville and sent him the order of the Saint Esprit. ‘I madly love the Holy Father.’ While Madame de Pompadour was busy learning the affairs of state, she turned her attention to another interest of the King’s, in which it seemed desirable that she should share. During the early days of her life with him, she had studied the story of Madame de Montespan, Louis XIV’s superb mistress, mother of his children; now she concentrated on that of Madame de Maintenon, the barren but enormously powerful wife of his old age. She read all the biographies of her that she could find, and subscribed to a new
one
that was being written. The author was advised, if he wished to please his patroness, not to make too much of Louis XIV’s affairs with younger and prettier women. The Duc de Saint-Simon died in 1755 and the manuscript of his memoirs passed into the royal archives; she had all the passages about Madame de Maintenon copied out for her. In those days the history of preceding reigns was not easy of access; most of the relevant letters and diaries were still unpublished, and the
Gazette de France
was a very rudimentary news sheet (the Versailles correspondent was always one of the King’s musicians). We, today, know much more about the seventeenth century than anybody knew in the eighteenth. Madame Geoffrin, admittedly not very well educated, thought that Henri IV was the son of Henri III until she read Président Hénault’s
History of France
.

Madame de Pompadour made one little mistake about her predecessor. She saw old fashioned pictures of an elderly widow all over the palace; she knew that Madame de Maintenon was forty-nine when she married Louis XIV, and too virtuous to have been his mistress before that, and she therefore assumed her hold over the King to have been purely intellectual and religious. She must have forgotten to take the Bourbon temperament into account. We know that when Madame de Maintenon was seventy-five and the King seventy she told her confessor that it tired her very much to make love with him twice a day and asked whether she was obliged to go on doing so. The confessor wrote and put the question to his bishop, who, of course, replied that as a wife she must submit. However, religion and a community of interests had, in fact, been the chief link between Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV, and it was one which Madame de Pompadour wished to strengthen between herself and her King. She decided that she must become devout so that she and he could have a holy old age together; once again she demonstrated her perfect incomprehension of the Roman Catholic religion.

She began by going a great deal to the Convent of St Louis, and interesting herself in the young women of poor, but noble, families who were educated there. She also became a regular visitor to St Cyr, so full of august memories, founded by Madame de
Maintenon,
and the scene of her death. Here the nuns fell under her charm, and the Mother Superior spoke of her as ‘that Vestal.’ She ordered a beautiful Book of Hours, illuminated by Boucher, with a Turris Davidica strangely reminiscent of the three towers on her own coat of arms. Lazare Duvaux, who supplied her with bibelots, was called in to mend her crucifix. Among such items on her account with him as a seal in the form of a negro’s head, decorated with rubies and diamonds, a transparent blind in Italian taffetas, painted with bouquets and garlands, a chocolate box in rock crystal, we find a vessel for holy water in Vincennes china, decorated with cherubs, on black velvet with a gilded frame and destined for the Holy Father whom she loved so madly. She fasted in Lent, which she had never done before, spoke of giving up rouge, which would indeed have been considered a sign of piety; she prayed very often at the tomb of Alexandrine, and her conversation was full of such clichés as ‘revealed religion’, ‘a Christian life’, ‘a state of Grace’. She read holy books and urged Voltaire to translate the Psalms, went every day now to the chapel, sitting downstairs among the ordinary people instead of in her semi-royal box in the gallery, and stayed on long after the service was over, plunged in interminable adoration. Most extraordinary of all, she had the secret staircase between her room and the King’s walled up.

This spectacular piety was the talk of the Court. The Duc de La Vallière wrote to Voltaire: ‘A ray of grace has fallen, but there is no intoxication. A few little changes bear witness to it. We have given up going to the play, we fast three times a week during Lent … the few moments we can spare for reading are devoted to holy works. Otherwise, charming as ever and quite as powerful, we lead the same life with the same friends, of whom I flatter myself that I am one.’

The Abbé de Bernis saw fit to talk to her like a nanny: ‘I told her straight out that not one soul was going to be taken in by this play acting, everybody would say she was nothing but a hypocrite and that as it wasn’t real she would soon be tired of it; that she looks stupid enough now, nothing to what she will when she gives it all up again – she wasn’t pleased.’

Was it play acting? The most reliable witnesses, Croÿ and Luynes,
were
not sure. Luynes says she was a sick woman, and that ill health often brings people to God. He says, several times, that no doubt she really wanted to be converted and hoped that grace would come to her if she prayed fervently enough. Croÿ, though puzzled and seeing all the various contradictions, thought there was something in it because of her extremely honest character; he often says that he never knew her to tell a lie about anything. The most likely explanation is that she longed to be converted but was incapable of it. Since the death of her child she had been very unhappy; she saw people all round her deriving consolation from their religion. She also thought it would bring her a new and even closer union with the King; no effort was too great to achieve this and she set about it with determination. Of course an element of frivolity crept in; Madame de Pompadour could never banish that from any of her activities.

Père de Sacy, a Jesuit, was now sent for. The Marquise explained to him that she wished to make a general confession and go to communion. He replied that this would be difficult. The order to which he belonged had not forgotten that, very soon after they had accorded all these spiritual comforts to Louis XIV, the Comte de Toulouse was born. The royal confessor on that occasion had been the laughing-stock of the palace. But, she said, there was nothing wicked any more between her and the King – see the blocked-up staircase – nothing but friendship, chaste and pure. The father then said that, the scandal of her relationship with the King having been so open, there was only one thing for her to do; she must leave Versailles and go back to her husband. Otherwise the Church would be unable to believe that her conversion was genuine.

Madame de Pompadour, knowing that she was rather safe, wrote to d’Etioles and offered to go back to him. The poor man must have shuddered at the idea. He was living the intensely agreeable life of a rich
fermier général
; he had a mistress he loved and eventually married and boon companions; this merry company would have found the presence of a repentant, unrouged Madame de Pompadour at their suppers nothing if not embarrassing. He replied that he wished her all the good in the world but did not think they could live together again after so long. She showed the letter
to
Père de Sacy; hardly her fault if her husband refused to take her back? He said that in any case she must leave the Court. She explained patiently that the King would never allow her to do such a thing, it was out of the question. (In this she is corroborated by Luynes who said that even if she had really wanted to leave Versailles the King would never have allowed it; that she did speak of it at one moment and he had been very much upset and refused to hear the subject mentioned.) The father would have to find some other solution.

But he was already in trouble with stricter members of his order. This curious penitent, who still appeared with her face painted, who still received the King at all hours of the day – the secret staircase was not the only one in the north wing – was hardly bringing credit on the Company of Jesus. He must give up his visits. The Marquise, on her side, began to look for somebody more lenient. At last her friend Berryer found her a priest, who said that she might confess, and go to communion, but that she must do so in private. This was not exactly what she wanted; however, she supposed it was better than nothing. ‘A great consolation’, she said rather drearily, ‘to my soul.’

She was going through a difficult and depressing time altogether. During the last months of 1755, little more than a year after the death of Alexandrine, the King had been very much taken with a Court beauty, the Marquise de Coislin, a member of the fatal Mailly family (cousin of his three mistresses). Madame du Hausset describes Madame de Pompadour, at Marly, coming in, flinging down her muff and saying: ‘I never saw such insolence as that of Madame de Coislin – I was playing brelan with her this evening – you can’t imagine what I suffered. Everybody was watching us, Madame de Coislin said two or three times, looking at me, “I take the lot” – truly I thought I should faint when she said, triumphantly: “I’ve a hand full of Kings.” I only wish you could have seen her curtsey when she left me.’ ‘And the King?’ said Madame du Hausset, ‘how did he seem?’ ‘You don’t know the King, my dear – if he was going to put her in my room this very night he’d still be cold to her and friendly to me in public – that’s how he was brought up, for by nature he is good and frank.’