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15 - Women of Versailles- the Court of Louis XIV by Arthur-Leon Imbert de Saint-Amand · Women of Versailles- the Court of Louis XIV

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  Speaker 1: Section fifteen of Women of Versailles, The Court of Louis
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  Speaker 1: the fourteenth by our tour Leon Ambert de Saint Ament,
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  Speaker 1: translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. This librovox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. Read by Pamel and Agami, Chapter eleven,
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  Speaker 1: The Duchess of or Leon, Part two. The theological discussions
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  Speaker 1: which occupied so much space at court did not awaken
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  Speaker 1: the slightest interest in the princess. On this head, she writes,
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  Speaker 1: all they tell us about the other world is incomprehensible.
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  Speaker 1: It seems to me impossible to comprehend what God does
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  Speaker 1: with us, and that we ought to confine ourselves to
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  Speaker 1: admiring His omnipotence without desiring to argue about His goodness
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  Speaker 1: and justice. The beautiful and touching ceremonies of Catholicism, the
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  Speaker 1: long sermons, the protracted offices did not greatly please Madame
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  Speaker 1: I think. She writes that Monsieur is a devitee, and
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  Speaker 1: that he resembles Henry the Third in every way. If
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  Speaker 1: this is the road to heaven, I shall certainly never
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  Speaker 1: enter it. Seeing that I find it impossible to hear
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  Speaker 1: a high mass. I get through with my devotions very expeditiously,
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  Speaker 1: for I have a chaplain who hurries through his Mass
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  Speaker 1: in a quarter of an hour, which just suits me.
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  Speaker 1: In plain chant, she detested what she described as an
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  Speaker 1: eternal naming of the vowels, and referring to it, she said,
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  Speaker 1: very often, if I dared, I would run out of
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  Speaker 1: the church. So insupportable as this to me. I like
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Luther for having composed some fine hymns, and I
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  Speaker 1: am persuaded that it has given many people the notion
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  Speaker 1: of becoming Lutherans, for those hymns have something gay about them. Madame,
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  Speaker 1: who was very observant, analyzed and described the various kinds
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  Speaker 1: of piety exhibited by the courtiers. In matters of devotion,
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  Speaker 1: I see that everyone follows his inclination. Those who like
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  Speaker 1: to babble want to pray a good deal. Those who
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  Speaker 1: are generous by nature always give alms. Those who are
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  Speaker 1: choleric and easily annoyed are constantly in transports and want
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  Speaker 1: to kill everybody. Those, on the other hand, who are gay,
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  Speaker 1: think they can serve God very well by rejoicing in
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  Speaker 1: all things and being annoyed by nothing. In short, devotion
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  Speaker 1: is for those addicted to it a touchstone which discovers
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  Speaker 1: their natural inclinations. For my part, I think the worst
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  Speaker 1: devities are the ambitious ones who simulate devotion in order
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  Speaker 1: to rule, and who claim to render a great service
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  Speaker 1: to God by subjecting everything to their power. The most
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  Speaker 1: supportable are those who, having been very amorous, when they
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  Speaker 1: once take God for their object, think of nothing but
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  Speaker 1: speaking to him affectionately, and leave everybody else at peace.
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  Speaker 1: What shocked Madame was not religion, which she respected, but
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  Speaker 1: the hypocrites who used it as a mask. Her indignation
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  Speaker 1: was not directed against the faith, but against the rising
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  Speaker 1: flood of skepticism, and we credit her with sincere grief
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  Speaker 1: when she wrote in sixteen ninety nine, the faith is
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  Speaker 1: so extinct in this country that one hardly finds a
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  Speaker 1: single young man who does not wish to be an atheist.
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  Speaker 1: But what is stranger still is that the same individual
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  Speaker 1: who turns atheist at Paris plays the devitee at court.
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  Speaker 1: It is claimed also that all the suicides which have
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  Speaker 1: been so frequent lately are caused by atheist. With such
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  Speaker 1: an opinion of the courtiers, it is easy to understand
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  Speaker 1: how badly off the Princess Palatine must have found herself
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  Speaker 1: among them. German to the end of her fingernails. She
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  Speaker 1: suffered when obliged to live beside the enemies of her country,
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  Speaker 1: and the conflagrations of the Palatinate seemed to her infernal flames.
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  Speaker 1: This court, which played and danced while the palaces and
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  Speaker 1: cabins of Germany were burning, became to her an object
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  Speaker 1: of horror. The unhappy people who were expelled from their homes, robbed, despoiled, maltreated.
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  Speaker 1: The ruins of Heidelberg, Manheim, Anderdach, Baden, Rastadt, speia Wums
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  Speaker 1: were constantly in her mind, pursued as by phantoms. She
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  Speaker 1: was a prey to patriotic despair and anguish, and felt
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  Speaker 1: herself a prisoner in the splendid palace of their side.
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  Speaker 1: There is something touching in her plaints. Were it to
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  Speaker 1: save my life, it is impossible for me not to
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  Speaker 1: regret being so, to say, the pretext for the ruin
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  Speaker 1: of my country. I cannot look on coolly while they
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  Speaker 1: destroy it a single blow. And that poor Mannheim, all
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  Speaker 1: that cost the late Prince elector my father so much
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  Speaker 1: toil and trouble. Yes, when I think of all that
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  Speaker 1: has been ruined there. It fills me with such horror
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  Speaker 1: that every night, as soon as I begin to fall asleep,
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  Speaker 1: I seem to be at Heidelberger Monheim, beholding the ravages
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  Speaker 1: that have been committed. Then I start up wide awake,
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  Speaker 1: and it takes me more than two hours to go
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  Speaker 1: to sleep again. I fancy how it all was in
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  Speaker 1: my time, and to what condition it has been reduced
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  Speaker 1: to day. I consider also in what condition I am myself,
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  Speaker 1: and I cannot avoid weeping bitter tears. The Princess found
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  Speaker 1: few with whom she sympathized. In this large and brilliant court.
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  Speaker 1: She admired neither the men, the women, nor the things
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  Speaker 1: that figured there. Everything displeased and annoyed her. The figure
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  Speaker 1: of the King, whom she somewhat ironically called the Great Man,
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  Speaker 1: was the only one that seemed to her majestic, And
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  Speaker 1: even on that sun she discovered many spots. Her family
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  Speaker 1: afforded her no satisfaction. She had the sorriest opinion of
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  Speaker 1: her husband, who was incessantly occupied with futilities, masquerades, and
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  Speaker 1: cynical intrigues. One of her letters, written in sixteen ninety six,
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  Speaker 1: contains this curious passage Monsieurs says openly, and he had
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  Speaker 1: not concealed it from either his daughter or me, that
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  Speaker 1: as he is beginning to grow old, he has no
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  Speaker 1: time to lose. That he will do everything and spare
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  Speaker 1: nothing to amuse himself up to the last. That those
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  Speaker 1: who survive him will know how to spend their time
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  Speaker 1: after their own fashion. But that he loves himself better
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  Speaker 1: than me or his children, and that in consequence he intends,
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  Speaker 1: so long as he lives, to attend to no one
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  Speaker 1: but himself, and he acts as he talks. Madame was
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  Speaker 1: not more happy in her son, the future Regent, than
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  Speaker 1: in her husband. The judgment she passed on this son,
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  Speaker 1: who wilfully spoiled the fine qualities he had been endowed
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  Speaker 1: with by nature, justifies that of Louis the fourteenth. On
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  Speaker 1: this boaster of vices, fant feren De vises, although his
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  Speaker 1: inclinations are in reality serious, she writes, and he does
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  Speaker 1: not take kindly to debauchery, he yields to it solely
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  Speaker 1: to imitate others. And that what annoys me most of all.
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  Speaker 1: If the pleasure were in his nature, I should not
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  Speaker 1: have much to say against it, but that he should
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  Speaker 1: do violence to himself in order to take to vice
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  Speaker 1: and talk twaddle, while at the same time he hides
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  Speaker 1: everything that is good in him. This is what I
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  Speaker 1: cannot endure without pain. The Princess Palatine had a horror
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  Speaker 1: of illegitimate births, and her pride was outraged by the
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  Speaker 1: rank occupied at court by the daughters of Louis the
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  Speaker 1: fourteenth and Madame de Montespont, whom she detested, to use
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  Speaker 1: her own expression as being the bastards of a double adultery,
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  Speaker 1: the children of the worst and most abandoned woman that
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  Speaker 1: the earth can bear. Hence, when her son consented to
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  Speaker 1: marry one of these bastards, she was so enraged as
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  Speaker 1: to give him in the gallery of their sille, that
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  Speaker 1: vigorous and resounding slap in the face which re echoes
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  Speaker 1: so plainly in Saint Simon's memoirs. She wrote in seventeen hundred,
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  Speaker 1: my son has caused me much grief in addition to
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  Speaker 1: his marriage. What I find worst in his conduct is
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  Speaker 1: that I am the only one who cannot have his friendship,
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  Speaker 1: For with that exception, he is good to everybody, and
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  Speaker 1: yet I have only lost his friendship by always advising
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  Speaker 1: him in his own interest. At present I have taken
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  Speaker 1: my stand. I say nothing more to him, and speak
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  Speaker 1: to him as I would to the first comer of
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  Speaker 1: indifferent things. But it is a very painful thing not
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  Speaker 1: to be able to open one's heart to those one loves. Inwardly,
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  Speaker 1: tormented and exasperated by her husband's favorites, saddened as a wife,
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  Speaker 1: a mother, and a German, Madame cared little for the
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  Speaker 1: splendors of Versailles and Saint clud where her existence was
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  Speaker 1: a blending of luxury and poverty. Certainly, said she, I
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  Speaker 1: would attach great value to grandeur if one could have
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  Speaker 1: all that should accompany it, plenty of gold, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: in order to be magnificent, and the power to assist
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  Speaker 1: the good and punish the wicked. But to have only
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  Speaker 1: the name of grandeur without the money, to be reduced
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  Speaker 1: to the strictest necessaries, to live under perpetual constraint, without
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  Speaker 1: its being possible to have any society. This seems to me,
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  Speaker 1: in truth, perfectly insipid, and I care nothing whatever about it.
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  Speaker 1: I should prize more a condition in which one could
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  Speaker 1: amuse one's self with good friends, without the troubles of grandeur,
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  Speaker 1: and do with one's property whatever one pleased. How did
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  Speaker 1: the Princess Palatine continue to divert herself from so many
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  Speaker 1: worries and cares by hunting and writing? The chase and
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  Speaker 1: still more the epistolary style. These were her two passions,
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  Speaker 1: her two manias. From sixteen seventy one, the year of
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  Speaker 1: her marriage, to seventeen twenty two, the year of her death,
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  Speaker 1: she never stopped writing letters to members of her German family.
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  Speaker 1: On Mondays, she wrote to Savoy, on Wednesdays, to Modona
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  Speaker 1: Thursdays and Sundays to Hanover. But this rage for scribbling
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  Speaker 1: was fatal to her. Notwithstanding, her correspondence, opened at the
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  Speaker 1: post office, was sent to Madame de Mantinon, who showed
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  Speaker 1: the imprudent Princess a letter full of the most outrageous
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  Speaker 1: insults one can fancy, says Saint Simon, whether at this
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  Speaker 1: aspect and this reading Madame did not think of dying
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  Speaker 1: on the spot she began to cry, and Madame de
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  Speaker 1: mantinean to represent modestly to her the enormity of every
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  Speaker 1: part of this letter, and in a foreign country too.
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  Speaker 1: The best excuse for Madame was to own up what
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  Speaker 1: she could not deny pardons, repentances, prayers, promises. Madame de
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  Speaker 1: Mantinon coldly enjoyed her triumph for some time, letting the
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  Speaker 1: princess choke over her words, weep and try to take
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  Speaker 1: her hands. It was a terrible humiliation for so arrogant
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  Speaker 1: and proud a German. Nothing more is needed to explain
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  Speaker 1: the hatred of the Princess Palatine for her, to whom
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  Speaker 1: in her rage she applied the old German proverb, where
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  Speaker 1: the devil cannot go himself, he sends an old woman.
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  Speaker 1: Madame quieted down when she became a widow in seventeen
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  Speaker 1: o one. No convent, said she the day after Monsieur died.
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  Speaker 1: Let no one talk to me about a convent. Happy
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  Speaker 1: to remain at court in spite of the ill things
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  Speaker 1: she had said about it, she softened toward Madame de
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  Speaker 1: Mantonan sufficiently to write in seventeen twelve, although the old
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  Speaker 1: woman is our most cruel enemy. Still I wish her
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  Speaker 1: a long life, for everything would go ten times worse
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  Speaker 1: than it does if the King were to die now,
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  Speaker 1: he has loved this woman so much that he certainly
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  Speaker 1: would not survive her. Therefore, I hope she may live
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  Speaker 1: for many years. Madame ended her days like a good Christian,
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  Speaker 1: and Massillon, in a beautiful funeral oration rendered due homage
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  Speaker 1: to the courage she had displayed in her last sufferings.
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  Speaker 1: To those who surrounded her death bed, she had said,
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  Speaker 1: with a calmness worthy of Louis the fourteenth, we shall
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  Speaker 1: meet again in heaven to sum up. Madame, the Duchess
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  Speaker 1: of Orleon, is a very strange type, but she demands attention,
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  Speaker 1: whether or no, in her uprightness and good sense. Justice
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  Speaker 1: and humanity coexist with great caprices in her letters. Amidst
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  Speaker 1: a mass of insignificant details, more or less inexact anecdotes, commonplaces,
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  Speaker 1: and worldly gossip, there are thoughts worthy of a moralist,
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  Speaker 1: and judgments that bear the stamp of wisdom. It is
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  Speaker 1: true she preached morality in cynical language, but if she
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  Speaker 1: speaks of debauchery, it is only to stigmatize it and
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  Speaker 1: depict its shamefulness. She has at least the merit of
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  Speaker 1: seeing vice as it is, of looking it in the face,
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  Speaker 1: of detesting it with a warlike, aggressive, irreconcilable hatred, of
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  Speaker 1: stigmatizing it in Rabelasian accents, whose triviality renders them more
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  Speaker 1: striking than fine hum For that matter, are not crudities
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  Speaker 1: of language and audacities of expression less dangerous than certain
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  Speaker 1: refinements of half mystical, half sensual poesy, which, by confounding
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  Speaker 1: the alcove with the oratory, envelop voluptuousness in a cloud
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  Speaker 1: of incense. End of Section fifteen.