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Ch. 16: The Duchess of Burgundy, Pt. 2 · Women of Versailles: The Court of Louis XIV

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  Section twenty two of Women of Versailles The Court of Louis the fourteenth by our
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  tour leon Ambert de saint Ament, translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. This librovox
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  recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamel and Agami, Chapter sixteen,
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  The Duchess of Burgundy, Part two. The Duchess of Burgundy suffered simultaneously
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  from the disasters of both her countries, Savoy and France. Make us some
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  saints to obtain peace for us, said Madame de Mantanon to the inmates of
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  Saint Cyr. The Duchess as la BeO mal remarks exhibited in the perilous circumstances
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  of the country, the dignity of the first woman of the state, the
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  sentiments of a Roman matron for Rome, and the agitations of a soul which
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  desired the good with an ardor beyond her age. The hour of great sorrows
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  had arrived. As Monsieur Capfigue has said so well, the difficult time for
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  a powerful and fortunate king is old age. Though the head remained firm,
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  the arms grow feeble, garlands wither even laurels take a grayish hint. People
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  respect you still but they do not love you anymore. Cocked hats with waving
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  plumes bring out the wrinkles of the face and the lines of the forehead.
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  The gold headed cane is no longer a sort of scepter, but a staff
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  which sustains the feeble legs and the stooping body. For the Duchess of Burgundy,
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  the aging Louis the fourteenth, preserved all his prestige. She loved him
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  sincerely. The public, says Madame de Caelouse, has difficulty in comprehending that
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  princes act simply and naturally, because they do not see them near enough at
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  hand to judge, and because the marvelous that they are always seeking is never
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  found in simple conduct and orderly sentiments. Hence they wished to believe that the
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  Duchess resembled her father, and that at the age of eleven, when she
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  came to France, she was as crafty and as politic as he was,
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  and affected for the King and Madame de Mantaillon, a tenderness she did not
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  possess. I you have had the honor of seeing her very near judge.
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  Otherwise I have seen her weeping, and such good faith over the great age
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  of these two persons, who she thought must die before her, that I
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  cannot doubt her tenderness for the King. Louis the fourteenth, who knew the
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  human heart, perceived with his usual perspicacity, that the Duchess of Burgundy had
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  a sincere affection for him. It was on that account that he displayed an
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  exceptional attachment for her, Like a rose blooming in his cemetery, the young
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  and enchanting princess charmed and consoled the sorrowful years of the great king. It
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  was the last smile of fortune, the last ray of sunlight. But alas
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  the fair rose was to bloom but a day and yet a little longer,
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  and all would be enshrouded in gloom. Since seventeen eleven, when Monseigneur died,
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  the Duke of Burgundy had been Dauphin, and Sassimon reports that the Duchess
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  says, in speaking of the ladies who criticized her, they will have to
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  reckon with me, and I will be their queen. Alas he adds,
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  she believed it, the charming princess, and who would not have believed it
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  with her? And yet, according to the Prince's palatine, she was convinced
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  that her end was near. Madame thus expresses herself a learned astrologer of Turin,
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  having drawn the horoscope of Madame, the Dauphiness had predicted to her all
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  that would happen to her, and that she would die in her twenty seventh
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  year. She often spoke of it. One day she said to her husband,
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  see the time is coming when I must die. You cannot remain without
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  a wife, on account of your rank and your devotion. Tell me I
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  entreat you whom you will marry. He answered, I hope God will never
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  punish me enough to let me see you die. And if this misfortune must
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  befall me, I shall never remarry, for I should follow you to the
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  grave in eight days. While the Dauphiness was still in good health, fresh
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  and gay, she often said, well, I must rejoice, because I
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  cannot rejoice long, for I shall die this year. I thought it was
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  a pleasantry, but the thing was only too real. When she fell ill,
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  she said she would not recover. The nearer the door fine approached the
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  fatal time. The better she grew, one might have thought she wanted to
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  deepen the grief that would be caused by her premature death. The prince's palatine,
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  ordinarily so malevolent, so sarcastic avows it herself, having says she enough
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  intelligence to note her faults, the Dauphiness could not do other than try to
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  correct them. This, in fact, is what she did, and to
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  such a point as to excite general astonishment. She continued thus to the end.
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  Madame the Viscountess of Noai has said, in the most touching way,
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  from time to time history offers us attractive personages who move the reader even to
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  affection. Providence frequently withdraws them from the world in their youth, still adorned
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  with the charms which time removes, and the hopes which it might have realized.
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  The Duchess of Burgundy was one of these girls, graceful apparitions, attacked
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  with a terrible malady, which was, it appears, the measles, but
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  which was attributed to poison. The Duchess was taken away in a few days
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  from the king of whom she was the consolation, the husband who idolized her,
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  the court whose ornament she was, and France, of which she was
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  the hope. She died with equal dignity and courage in the most religious sentiments.
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  It was in her bedroom at Versailles on Friday February twelfth, seventeen twelve,
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  between eight and nine in the evening, that she breathed her last.
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  Almost exactly two years before, in the same room she had brought into the
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  world the prince who was to be called Louis the fifteenth. Her husband's grief
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  was such that he could not survive a wife so beloved. Six days afterward
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  he followed her to the tomb. France cried Sansimon fell at last beneath the
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  final chastisement. God has shown her a prince whom she did not deserve.
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  The earth was not worthy of him. He died ripe already for a blissful
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  eternity. The very day of the Duke of Burgundy's death, Madame wrote,
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  I am so overwhelmed that I cannot recover. I scarce know what I am
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  saying. You, who have a good heart, will certainly pity us,
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  for the sadness that prevails here cannot be described. Saint Simon pretends that the
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  sorrow caused Louis the fourteenth by the death of the Duchess of Burgundy was the
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  only real one he ever had in his life that is not exact. The
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  Great King had profoundly regretted his mother and Madame. The Prince's palatine thus expresses
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  herself concerning the grief that overwhelmed him in the death of his only son.
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  The Grand Dauphin. I saw the King yesterday at eleven o'clock. He is
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  a prey to such affliction that he would soften a rock. He does not
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  fret, however, he speaks to everyone with a resigned sadness, and gives
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  his orders with great firmness. But the tears come into his eyes every moment,
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  and he stifles his sobs. Such was the man whom superficial minds characterized
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  as egoistic and insensitive. On February twenty second, seventeen twelve, the bodies
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  of the Duchess and the Duke of Burgundy were born from their Sailles to Saint
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  Denis on a single beer. The Dauphin, their eldest son, died the
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  following March eighth. He was five years and some months old. Thus the
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  father, the mother, and the eldest son disappeared within twenty four days.
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  Three Dauphins had died in a single year. These events, so horrible in
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  themselves, were made still more so by the widely prevalent false idea that these
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  premature deaths were the result of poison. The Duke of Orleon was most perfidiously
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  and unjustly accused of being the author of these crimes, and efforts were made
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  to induce Louis the fourteenth to entertain this abominable suspicion. With the Duchess of
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  Burgundy were eclipsed joy, pleasures, amusements, even and every sort of favors.
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  If the court existed after her, it was only to languish. And
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  yet under the weight of so many trials, the great soul of Louis the
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  fourteenth was not enfeebled. Amidst the lugubrious debris of his august house. Louis
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  remains firm in the faith God had breathed upon his numerous posterity, and in
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  an instant it was effaced, like characters written in the sand, of all
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  the princes who had surrounded him, and who formed, as it were,
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  the rays and the glory of his crown. There remained but one feeble spark,
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  even then, on the point of being extinguished. He adores him who
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  disposes of crowns and scepters, and perhaps he sees in these domestic losses the
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  mercy which is completing the effacement from the book of the Lord's justice the traces
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  of his former guilty passions. All France was in despair. This time of
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  desolation, says Voltaire, left so profound an impression in hearts, that during
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  the minority of Louis the fifteenth I have seen many persons who could not speak
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  of these losses without shedding tears. Monsieur Michelet, who cannot be accused of
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  exaggerated admiration for the great century, is himself affected. While relating the death
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  of the charming Duchess of Burgundy, the court, he says, was literally
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  as if stunned by the blow one still weeps a hundred and fifty years afterwards.
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  In reading the heartrending pages in which Saint Simon records his grief, du
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  Cloe has claimed, without indicating the source, whence he obtained his information that,
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  on the death of the Duchess of Burgundy, Madame de Mantineou and the
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  King found in a casket that had belonged to the princess, papers which extorted
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  from the King, the exclamation the little rogue betrayed us from such a speech
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  so unlikely. From the mouth of Louis, the fourteenth Duke Clo infers a
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  correspondence in which the daughter of Victor Amadeus had surrendered state secrets to him.
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  This we believe to be one of those numerous hearsays from which history is too
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  often written. The archives of Turin have preserved no trace of this pretended correspondence,
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  which is neither true nor probable. Assuredly, the Duchess of Burgundy did
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  not forget her native land, but after bidding adieu to Savoy, she had
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  no longer any country but France. Doubtless Italy may count among the fairest pearls
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  of her casket those two intelligent and alluring sisters who both died so prematurely,
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  and left behind them so touching a remembrance, the Duchess of Burgundy and her
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  sister, the Queen of Spain, the valiant consort of Philip the fifth.
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  But the greater part of the Duchess of Burgundy's destiny was fulfilled in France,
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  and her portrait must figure in the Chateau of Versailles. How many times in
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  eighteen seventy one, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was, so to say,
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  encamped in the midst of the Queen's apartments, did we evoke the souvenir
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  of the charming princess in this chamber, where she slept from the time of
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  her arrival at Versailles, and where sixteen years and a half later she breathed
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  her last sigh. It was there that, at eleven years of age,
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  torn forever from her family, her friends, her country, she found herself
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  alone among the splendors of a strange palace. Twas there the child grew,
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  became a young girl, and then a young woman, increasing daily in graces
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  and attractions. There, in the silence of the night, she thought she
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  beheld the brilliant phantoms of the world, the seductive images against which perhaps her
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  reason battled with her heart. There she recalled to aid her in resisting the
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  temptations of an ardent soul. The austere instructions of Madame de Mantineau, who
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  had written to her, have a horror of sin. Vice is full of
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  evils and afflictions. Even in this world. There is no joy, no
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  repose, no true delight. But in serving God It was there that she
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  beheld death coming and welcomed its approach with a noble and religious courage. Poor
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  princess, even in presence of her dead body, disputes over etiquette went on.
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  Four bishops, sitting in ratchet and camail at the right side of the
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  bed, relieved each other like the ladies. When notified by the agents of
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  the clergy, they claimed chairs with backs, kneeling cushions, and a holy
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  water sprinkler. The first two were refused them they had nothing but folding stools
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  and no cushions. They made such an outcry that they got the sprinkler.
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  Strictly speaking, history is nothing but a long funeral sermon. The more closely
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  it is studied, the more it is seen to be full of tears.
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  The view of a palace is as fruitful in lessons as that of a cemetery
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  and the chateau of Versailles. When one is surrounded there by the illustrious shades
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  that have occupied it, suddenly assumes the aspect of an immense catafalque. The
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  guildings are veiled with crape. One fancies that the fountains are weeping, and
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  the son of the great King is hidden behind a heavy cloud. Death is
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  in every chamber. It stands at every door, to make its dismal voice
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  listened to, and to repeat the great saying, Vanity, All is Vanity.
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  End of Section twenty two