



Produced by David Widger





MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XV. AND XVI.

Being Secret Memoirs of Madame du Hausset,
Lady's Maid to Madame de Pompadour,
and of an unknown English Girl
and the Princess Lamballe




BOOK 2.



Madame sent for me yesterday evening, at seven o'clock, to read something
to her; the ladies who were intimate with her were at Paris, and M. de
Gontaut ill.  "The King," said she, "will stay late at the Council this
evening; they are occupied with the affairs of the Parliament again." She
bade me leave off reading, and I was going to quit the room, but she
called out, "Stop."  She rose; a letter was brought in for her, and she
took it with an air of impatience and ill-humour.  After a considerable
time she began to talk openly, which only happened when she was extremely
vexed; and, as none of her confidential friends were at hand, she said to
me, "This is from my brother.  It is what he would not have dared to say
to me, so he writes.  I had arranged a marriage for him with the daughter
of a man of title; he appeared to be well inclined to it, and I,
therefore, pledged my word.  He now tells me that he has made inquiries;
that the parents are people of insupportable hauteur; that the daughter
is very badly educated; and that he knows, from authority not to be
doubted, that when she heard this marriage discussed, she spoke of the
connection with the most supreme contempt; that he is certain of this
fact; and that I was still more contemptuously spoken of than himself. In
a word, he begs me to break off the treaty.  But he has let me go too
far; and now he will make these people my irreconcilable enemies.  This
has been put in his head by some of his flatterers; they do not wish him
to change his way of living; and very few of them would be received by
his wife."  I tried to soften Madame, and, though I did not venture to
tell her so, I thought her brother right.  She persisted in saying these
were lies, and, on the following Sunday, treated her brother very coldly.
He said nothing to me at that time; if he had, he would have embarrassed
me greatly.  Madame atoned for everything by procuring favours, which
were the means of facilitating the young lady's marriage with a gentleman
of the Court.  Her conduct, two months after marriage, compelled Madame
to confess that her brother had been perfectly right.

I saw my friend, Madame du Chiron.  "Why," said she, "is the Marquise so
violent an enemy to the Jesuits?  I assure you she is wrong.  All
powerful as she is, she may find herself the worse for their enmity." I
replied that I knew nothing about the matter.  "It is, however,
unquestionably a fact; and she does not feel that a word more or less
might decide her fate."--"How do you mean?"  said I.  "Well, I will
explain myself fully," said she.  "You know what took place at the time
the King was stabbed: an attempt was made to get her out of the Castle
instantly.  The Jesuits have no other object than the salvation of their
penitents; but they are men, and hatred may, without their being aware of
it, influence their minds, and inspire them with a greater degree of
severity than circumstances absolutely demand.  Favour and partiality
may, on the other hand, induce the confessor to make great concessions;
and the shortest interval may suffice to save a favourite, especially if
any decent pretext can be found for prolonging her stay at Court."  I
agreed with her in all she said, but I told her that I dared not touch
that string.  On reflecting on this conversation afterwards, I was
forcibly struck with this fresh proof of the intrigues of the Jesuits,
which, indeed, I knew well already.  I thought that, in spite of what I
had replied to Madame du Chiron, I ought to communicate this to Madame de
Pompadour, for the ease of my conscience; but that I would abstain from
making any reflection upon it.  "Your friend, Madame du Chiron," said
she, "is, I perceive, affiliated to the Jesuits, and what she says does
not originate with herself.  She is commissioned by some reverend father,
and I will know by whom."  Spies were, accordingly, set to watch her
movements, and they discovered that one Father de Saci, and, still more
particularly, one Father Frey, guided this lady's conduct.  "What a
pity," said Madame to me, "that the Abbe Chauvelin cannot know this." He
was the most formidable enemy of the reverend fathers.  Madame du Chiron
always looked upon me as a Jansenist, because I would not espouse the
interests of the good fathers with as much warmth as she did.

Madame is completely absorbed in the Abbe de Bernis, whom she thinks
capable of anything; she talks of him incessantly.  Apropos, of this
Abbe, I must relate an anecdote, which almost makes one believe in
conjurors.  A year, or fifteen months, before her disgrace, Madame de
Pompadour, being at Fontainebleau, sat down to write at a desk, over
which hung a portrait of the King.  While she was, shutting the desk,
after she had finished writing, the picture fell, and struck her
violently on the head..  The persons who saw the accident were alarmed,
and sent for Dr. Quesnay.  He asked the circumstances of the case, and
ordered bleeding and anodynes.  Just, as she had been bled, Madame de
Brancas entered, and saw us all in confusion and agitation, and Madame
lying on her chaise-longue.  She asked what was the matter, and was told.
After having expressed her regret, and having consoled her, she said, "I
ask it as a favour of Madame, and of the King (who had just come in),
that they will instantly send a courier to the Abbe de Bernis, and that
the Marquise will have the goodness to write a letter, merely requesting
him to inform her what his fortune-tellers told him, and to withhold
nothing from the fear of making her uneasy."  The thing was, done as she
desired, and she then told us that La Bontemps had predicted, from the
dregs in the, coffee-cup, in which she read everything, that the, head of
her best friend was in danger, but that no fatal consequences would
ensue.

The next day, the Abbe wrote word that Madame Bontemps also said to him,
"You came into the world almost black," and that this was the fact.  This
colour, which lasted for some time, was attributed to a picture which
hung at the foot of his, mother's bed, and which she often looked at.  It
represented a Moor bringing to Cleopatra a basket of flowers, containing
the asp by whose bite she destroyed herself.  He said that she also told
him, "You have a great deal of money about you, but it does not belong to
you;" and that he had actually in his pocket two hundred Louis for the
Duc de La Valliere.  Lastly, he informed us that she said, looking in the
cup, "I see one of your friends--the best--a distinguished lady,
threatened with an accident;" that he confessed that, in spite of all his
philosophy, he turned pale