CAMEO End of the French Regency. 1723. -"Come, sire, do it with a good grace." Fleury was not a Bossuet or a Fénelon, though a fairly good man, who thus far had made the boy devout and scrupulous; but it had not been possible to teach him much, or to give him intellectual tastes, far less principles of government, or to enlarge his narrow self-concentrated nature; so that the unhappy lad was growing up to complete the iniquity of his dynasty. His amusements at Meudon seem to have been the cause of a chill which resulted in a fever affecting the throat, and he was in some danger. The courtiers hurried to inspect him, and the Duchess de la Ferté, sister to Madame de Ventadour, whispered loudly to St. Simon, "He is poisoned !" and could hardly be withheld from telling the king himself of her belief! A young physician, who bled him in the foot, had the credit of having saved his life. The king's governor, the Marshal Duke of Villeroi, escorted him to return thanks for his recovery at Notre Dame, and with difficulty persuaded him to show himself to the populace in a balcony at the Tuileries, and to look at the fireworks in honour of the occasion. Dubois hated Villeroi, being sure that the marshal would induce the king to deprive him of his post as soon as the regency was over; and the Duke of Orleans was also offended by the precautions which showed that he was strongly suspected of a crime he had never wished to attempt. One day, when Orleans desired to hold a private interview with the king, Villeroi absolutely refused, saying that his duty forbade him to let his charge be out of his sight, or receive proposals which he did not hear. The regent calmly told him that he forgot to whom he was speaking, and withdrew. It was expected that Villeroi would come to apologise the next morning, so preparations were made at the Palais Royal. There, in the anteroom, he was arrested, put into a sedan chair, carried across the garden to a carriage, and sent off to his country estates under an escort. Fleury on this withdrew from court, but the young king lamented and complained so loudly that the Bishop was recalled, and this satisfied his pupil, so that he consented to receive the Duke de Choiseul as his governor. Orleans actually consented to make Dubois Prime Minister, and growing more indolent, left everything in the hands of this personage, who was so much afraid of intriguers turning the regent against him that he employed all his vigilance in watching his master instead of on public affairs, which fell more and more into confusion. His insolence and abusive language to those who sought an audience were unbearable. He actually pushed a lady out of the room by the shoulders for calling him "Monseigneur," instead of "Votre Eminence." In February, 1723, the young king completed his thirteenth year, and thus was declared of age. He had become persuaded that he owed everything to the regent and the cardinal, and at the Bed of Justice, when he announced that he took on himself the government, he threw himself upon the duke's neck, calling him dear uncle, begging him still to direct the affairs of the kingdom, and announcing that Cardinal Dubois was still prime minister. Thus there was no real change for the next few months, but on the 9th of August, Dubois died under an operation, raging in fury against the doctors. The Duke of Orleans, to save himself trouble, proposed to the king to make Fleury first minister, and Louis gladly consented, since he seems to have cared for his tutor more than for any one else. The Duke of Orleans was only forty-nine, but his dissipated life had told on his health. His face had grown red and blotched, and he had fits of lethargy which made his friends uneasy; but he persisted in all his habits of self-indulgence in spite of warnings. On the 29th of November, his physician, Chirac, begged him to be bled and submit to treatment. “Not yet,” said the duke—“ wait till Monday, and I will put myself into your hands.” On Monday Chirac came, but the duke bade him wait till the morrow. "I wish to enjoy my dinner to-day, and to wait on the king afterwards," he said; and when Chirac remonstrated, he was only provoked into saying that he had more faith in his cook than in his physician. He did enjoy his dinner, but after it complained of headache, and in a few minutes sank down unconscious, and was dead even before any doctor could arrive—a call even more fearfully sudden than that of his cousin, Charles II., whom he so much resembled. So flagrant had been his conduct that one of the flippant Parisian witticisms was to say that the old Duchess was like Idleness, for she was the mother of all the vices. He did not escape, even in his death, the imputation of the sin from which he was free, that of murder, for it was reported, and for some time believed in Paris, that instead of apoplexy, he died of drinking poisoned coffee intended for the king. In Louis's first grief for the guardian who had always been kind to him, the Bishop of Fréjus suggested to him that he had better nominate the Duke of Bourbon as chief minister, and this was done at once, Fleury well knowing that the ignorant, dull, and rude duke was likely to leave all to himself, provided no jealousy was excited, and indeed Fleury, though not a great man, was by far the most respectable person about the poor young king. The only son of Philip of Orleans was slightly deformed, and far from clever, so that his father used to say it was hard to be suspected of wishing to make way for setting such a being on the throne. He was only twenty-one, and almost as shy and silent as the king. He was religiously disposed, though he had been led by fashion into some dissipation; but the shock of his father's death sobered him once for all, and from that time forth he lived a grave, retired life, full of deeds of charity, so that he is known as the good Duke of Orleans. CAMEO Death of 1723. CAMEO Family of 1724. His next sister set her heart on going into a convent, and became abbess of Chelles. She did much as she pleased, and practised no strict monastic discipline, but she was never otherwise than decorous. The third daughter, the Duchess of Modena, manifested the corrupt disposition of her family; and the fourth, who was married to the heir of Spain, seemed likely to prove no better, though still very young. King Philip V., always longing to return to Paris, and flattered by reports of his nephew's bad health, resigned his crown to his son Luis, in order to be free to become King of France. Young Luis was dull and silent, and much disliked his French wife. On the first indiscretion on her part, he shut her up in a castle with one lady, and though he soon sent her to the palace of Buen Retiro, he was thinking of procuring a divorce, when he was attacked by malignant small-pox. The young queen nursed him most faithfully till she fell ill herself, and she was in great danger, when he died, on the 31st of August, 1724, and his father returned to the throne. She never wholly recovered, and lived a retired life, where she was said to show herself sullen and selfish. As soon as she could travel, she was again exchanged on the Bidassoa for the Spanish Infanta ! For the French did not wish to wait for this little girl to be grown old enough for marriage, to see the birth of a dauphin secure them from a war between the Orleans family and Spain. When the announcement was made to the King and Queen of Spain, by the Abbé de Livre on his knees, they kept silence, but by and by the Queen broke out. She snatched off her bracelet with the miniature of Louis XV. and crushed it. "The Bourbons are a race of devils--" she began, then checked herself and added: 66 except your Majesty." The European princesses were studied by the French Ministry. There were ninety-nine unmarried ones, but only twenty-five were Roman Catholic, and the Duke of Bourbon was determined to choose no one who had powerful connections or likely to be clever enough to influence the King. The great Tzar Peter had died in 1721, and left the throne to his widow, Catherine I. His daughter Elizabeth was proposed for Louis XV., but rejected, though she would have abjured the Greek Church, chiefly on the ground of her mother's low birth, and the semi-barbarism of her country. Next was proposed Maria Lecksinska, the daughter of that King of Poland who had been set up by Charles XII., and dethroned in favour of Augustus of Saxony. She was twenty-two, and was living with her parents in an old Commandery of the Templars at Weissenberg, upon a pension granted by France. There had been an idea of marrying her to the son of the Count d'Estrées, but this had failed on the Regent Orleans refusing to make him a duke and peer of France. She was known to be neither beautiful nor clever, but very good and gentle. When the Duke of Bourbon's propositions were made, King Stanislas went into the room where his wife and daughter sat at work, exclaiming "Let us fall on our knees and thank God!" "Father, are you recalled to the throne of Poland ?" cried the princess. "God has granted a more amazing favour," returned Stanislas. "You are Queen of France!" CAMEO Marriage of Louis XV. 1725. CAMEO XXXI. Toleration Orleans. He greatly THE good-natured Duke of Orleans wished for toleration. disliked the Jesuits, more, it is to be feared, for their virtues than their faults. He brought forward the Cardinal de Noailles and gave him the by Regent feuille de bénéfices, i.e. the power of Church patronage in all cases which were not of favour or political interest, released the Jansenist prisoners in the Bastile, and recalled four doctors of the Sorbonne who had been exiled for refusing to register the Bull Unigenitus, which it may be remembered had been forced unwillingly from the Pope by Louis XIV. to be employed against the Jansenists. 1716. The Jesuits, who did not tolerate the Jansenists the more for their being supported by the vicious, free-thinking Regent, began to intrigue, and in consequence, Tellier was banished from Court, though Louis XIV. had nominated him, by will, to be Confessor to the young king. Children began to make regular confessions at seven years old, and the Regent gave the little Louis a man of great excellence, Claude Fleury, who had written what is perhaps the most complete Church history in existence, only rivalled by that of Dean Milman. "I give you this appointment," said the Regent, "because you are neither a Jansenist, nor a Molinist, nor an Ultramontane." He had been under-preceptor with Fénelon in the happy days of the education of the Duke of Burgundy, but he must not be confused with André Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus and afterwards Cardinal, who was in the higher position of preceptor to the king, and was one of the few who could coax the shy, dull young king into performing the duties of representation incumbent on him. Rome, having pronounced, would not, on any persuasion, retract |