Death of the Duc d’Orléans—M. de Genlis—Sillery—Coming of the Revolution—The Bastille—Anger of the Duchesse d’Orléans—Dissensions.
Capital letter T
THE Duke of Orléans died 1785, and Mme. de Montesson, having been forbidden by Louis XVI. to put her household into mourning or assume the position of a Duchess Dowager of Orléans, retired for a few weeks into a convent and then returned to her usual life, having inherited a great fortune from the late Duke.
Philippe-égalité was now Duc d’Orléans, and his eldest son Duc de Chartres. That young prince was about seventeen, and like all the Orléans family, except the Duchess and the Comte de Beaujolais, was thoroughly indoctrinated with the detestable spirit that prevailed at the Palais Royal.
The Maréchale d’Etrée, daughter of M. de Puisieux, died, and left all her large fortune, not to the spendthrift Marquis de Genlis, but to the Count, who, finding himself now very rich, wished to retire from the Palais Royal and live on his estates, and tried to induce his wife to accompany him. He said with truth that her proper and natural place [412] was with him, and he tried by all means in his power to persuade her to do what one would suppose a person constantly talking of duty, virtue, self-sacrifice, and the happiness of retirement, would not have hesitated about.
That she persistently refused proves how much all these professions were worth, and this time she does in her memoirs blame herself for her conduct; in fact, she declares that she felt ever afterwards a remorse that never left her, and that would be eternal; as she considered herself the cause of the death of her husband. If she had gone with him as he entreated her to do and as she acknowledged that she ought to have done, she could have induced him to leave France with her, he had sufficient money to enable them to live comfortably abroad, and his life would have been saved.
However, she refused to leave Belle Chasse, influenced by affection for her pupils, jealous of any one who might succeed her with them, fear of losing the prestige of having educated them, as she says; and, of course, of being separated from the Duc d’Orléans, which she does not say. At any rate she took her own way, and after a journey to England where she was extremely well received, she resumed her usual occupations. The Revolution was drawing nearer and nearer, though people did not realise its approach. A few more far-seeing persons foretold troubles and dangers in the future, but nobody except the well-known Cazotte, had any notion of the fearful tempest about to break over the unhappy kingdom of France.
Meanwhile, many who would have shrunk from [413] the crimes and horrors for which in their folly they were preparing the way as fast as possible, went on playing with fire, by encouraging the disloyalty that was in the air, sympathising with the outrageous demands put forward by the Radical leaders, circulating libels and inventing lying stories against the Queen and royal family, joining noisily in the abuse of everything that had hitherto been held sacred or respectable, and doing everything in their power to inflame the evil passions and excite the cupidity and violence of the mob.
One cannot help feeling intense satisfaction in reflecting that most of those who did all this mischief, at any rate, suffered for it, when the danger, ruin, and death they had prepared for others came upon themselves. One of the most abominable of the revolutionists, who had fallen under the displeasure of his friends and been condemned by them to be guillotined with his young son, begged to be allowed to embrace him on the scaffold; but the boy sullenly refused, saying, “No; it is you who have brought me to this.”
Among the Palais Royal set, it was the fashion to find fault with everything done by the royalists, to go as seldom as possible to Versailles and to pretend to find it a great bore when it was necessary to do so.
If a play was popular at Versailles it was sure to be hissed at Paris; a disgraced minister was the idol of the mob; the only liveries not insulted were those of Orléans.
For the Duc d’Orléans was aiming at the crown, and it is impossible to believe Mme. de Genlis was [414] not aware of it. He suggested to the Queen that Madame Royale should be married to his eldest son, which proposal Marie Antoinette decidedly refused, remarking afterwards that to marry her daughter to the Duc de Chartres would be to sign the death warrant of her son. [120]
Mme. de Genlis states that one evening while the States-General were sitting, the Duc d’Orléans, who was in her salon, declared that they would be of no use and do nothing; not even suppress the lettres de cachet. Mme. de Genlis and the Duc de Lauzun were of a different opinion, and they bet each other fifty louis on the subject. The bet was put into writing and Mme. de Genlis showed it to more than fifty people of her acquaintance, all of whom declared a Revolution to be impossible. The Abbé Cesutti, one of the free-thinking school, was editor of a paper called La feuille villageoise, intended for the people. He asked Mme. de Genlis to write for it, and she sent some papers called “The Letters of Marie-Anne,” in which she introduced doctrines and principles of religion. Soon after the Abbé came and asked her in future only to speak of morality and never to mention religion. Knowing what that meant she declined to write any more for that paper.
However, she was so far identified with the Revolutionary party as not only to rejoice at the infamous attack of the mob upon the Bastille, but to consent to her pupils’ request to take them to [415] Paris to see the mob finishing the destruction of that beautiful and historic monument.
In the “Souvenirs,” written in after years, when her ideas and principles had been totally changed by her experience of the Revolution, the beginning of which had so delighted her, she was evidently ashamed of the line she had taken, and anxious to explain it away as far as possible.
“I was of no party,” she writes, “but that of religion. I desired the reform of certain abuses, and I saw with joy the demolition of the Bastille, the abolition of lettres de cachet, and droits de chasse. That was all I wanted, my politics did not go farther than that. At the same time no one saw with more grief and horror than I, the excesses committed from the first moments of the taking of the Bastille.... The desire to let my pupils see everything led me on this occasion into imprudence, and caused me to spend some hours in Paris to see from the Jardin de Beaumarchais the people of Paris demolishing the Bastille. I also had a curiosity to see the Cordeliers Club.... I went there and I saw the orators, cobblers, and porters with their wives and mistresses, mounting the tribune and shouting against nobles, priests, and rich people.... I remarked a fishwoman....” This pretty spectacle to which she was said to have taken her pupils, was, of course, approved of by the Duke of Orléans, who made the Duc de Chartres a member of the Jacobin Club, “by the wish of the Duc d’Orléans, assuredly not by mine; but, however, it must be remembered that that society was not then what it afterward became, [416] although its sentiments were already very exaggerated. However, it was a pretext employed to estrange the Duchess of Orléans from me.”
And small wonder! Was the Duchess of Orléans—a woman of saintly character and the great grand-daughter [121] of Louis XIV.—to tolerate the governess of her children being seen in a den of blasphemy and low, unspeakable vice and degradation like the Cordeliers Club, or their being themselves shown with rejoicing a scene of horror and murder, and join in the triumph of ruffians who were attacking their religion, and the King and Queen, who were also their own cousins? Was it possible that anybody in their senses would tolerate such a governess? Added to which the Duchess was now aware of the terms on which Mme. de Genlis and the Duke stood to each other. It could no longer be said of her—
“The Duchess sees nothing, or will not see anything, but even shows a strange predilection for Mme. de Genlis, which made Mme. de Barbantane say that it is a love [122] which would make one believe in witchcraft.”
The Duc de Penthièvre, who knew his son-in-law and distrusted Mme. de Genlis, foresaw what would happen and opposed her entrance into the Palais Royal; but the influence of Mme. de Montesson had prevailed, and she was soon not only all-powerful herself, but had placed the different members of her family in lucrative posts [417] there. And, though they did not follow their party to the extreme excesses to which they were already tending, they were, so far, all tarred with the same brush.
In the “Memoirs of Louis XVIII,” he remarks, after the dismissal of Necker: “A report was spread that the Queen and the Comte d’Artois had given orders for a general massacre, to include the Duke of Orléans, M. Necker, and most of the members of the National Assembly. Sillery, Latouche, Laclos, Voidel, Ducrest, [123] Camille Desmoulin, and all those who came from the Duc d’Orléans, were the first to spread these lies.” [124]
After her proceedings at the Bastille and the Cordeliers, and considering her connection with the revolutionary party, Mme. de Genlis (or Sillery, as she was also called) need not have expressed the surprise and indignation she did at the arrival of a body of police to search her house for arms, reported to be stored there. They were sent by La Fayette, who had done even more mischief than she had; but for some reason they did not like each other. The touchy, conceited Republican poet, Marie Joseph Chénier, who ranted against religion, royalty, and everything and everybody superior to himself, began to make love to Mme. de Genlis, and when she objected to his impertinent familiarity, said furiously: “You are right; I am [418] neither a grand seigneur nor a duke!”—which specimen of the manners of her party disgusted her extremely. In her “Mémoires” she relates of this worthy that he was accused of having participated in the condemnation of his brother André, also a poet, executed under the Terror. This was, however, almost certainly untrue, but it was said that he could have saved him if he had made use of the influence he possessed with the Terrorists, but that he either feared or did not care to do so. The celebrated actress, Mlle. Dumesnil, then old and infirm, received one day a visit from him, during which he tormented her to recite something for him. She was ill in bed, but nevertheless he went on begging that she would recite only one line that he might say he had heard her, when, turning towards him with a violent effort she said—
“Approchez-vous, Néron, et prenez votre place!”
The first personal encounter of Mme. de Genlis with the Revolution was one afternoon in 1790. She had driven with Mademoiselle d’............