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Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV and the Regency

Duchesse d'Orleans

Section 12 of 33 - Table of Contents
He has earnestly requested Lord Stair to speak to the King of England
on your account.--[This passage is addressed to the Princess of
Wales.]--He says no one can be more desirous than he is that you should
be reinstated in your father's affection, and that he will neglect no
opportunity of bringing it about, being persuaded that it is to the
advantage of the King of England, as well as of yourself, that you should
be reconciled.

M. Law must be praised for his talent, but there is an astonishing number
of persons who envy him in this country.  My son is delighted with his
cleverness in business.

He has been compelled to arrest the Spanish Ambassador, the Prince of
Cellamara, because letters were found upon his courier, the Abbe Porto
Carero, who was his nephew, and who has also been arrested, containing
evidence of a plot against the King and against my son.  The Ambassador
was arrested by two Counsellors of State.  It was time that this
treachery should be made public.  A valet of the Abbe Porto Carero having
a bad horse, and not being able to get on so quick as his master, stayed
two relays behind, and met on his way the ordinary courier from Poitiers.
The valet asked him, "What news?"

"I don't know any," replied the postilion, "except that they have
arrested at Poitiers an English bankrupt and a Spanish Abbe who was
carrying a packet."

When the valet heard this he instantly took a fresh horse, and, instead
of following his master, he came back full gallop to Paris.  So great was
his speed, that he fell sick upon his arrival in consequence of the
exertion.  He outstripped my son's courier by twelve hours, and so had
time to apprise the Prince of Cellamara twelve hours before his arrest,
which gave him time to burn his most important letters and papers.  My
son's enemies pretend to treat this affair as insignificant to the last
degree; but I cannot see anything insignificant in an Ambassador's
attempting to cause a revolt in a whole kingdom, and among the
Parliament, against my son, and meditating his assassination as well as
that of his son and daughter.  I alone was to have been let live.

That Des Ursins must have the devil in her to have stirred up Pompadour
against my son.  He is not any very great personage; but his wife is a
daughter of the Duc de Navailles, who was my son's governor.  Madame de
Pompadour was the governess of the young Duc d'Alencon, the son of Madame
de Berri.  As to the Abbe Brigaut, I know him very well.  Madame de
Ventadour was his godmother, and he was baptized at the same time with
the first Dauphin, when he received the name of Tillio.  He has talent,
but he is an intriguer and a knave.  He pretended at first to be very
devout, and was appointed Pere de l'Oratoire; but, getting tired of this
life, he took up the trade of catering for the vices of the Court, and
afterwards became the secretary and factotum of Madame du Maine, for whom
he used to assist in all the libels and pasquinades which were written
against my son.  It would be difficult to say which prated most, he or
Pompadour.

Madame d'Orleans has great influence over my son.  He loves all his
children, but particularly his eldest daughter.  While still a child, she
fell dangerously ill, and was given over by her physicians.  My son was
in deep affliction at this, and resolved to attempt her cure by treating
her in his own way, which succeeded so well that he saved her life, and
from that moment has loved her better than all his other children.

                    ............................

The Abbe Dubois has an insinuating manner towards every one; but more
particularly towards those of whom he had the care in their childhood.

Two Germans were implicated in the conspiracy; but I am only surprised at
one of them, the Brigadier Sandrazky, who was with me daily, and in whose
behalf I have often spoken, because his father served my brother as
commandant at Frankendahl; he died in the present year.  The other is the
Count Schlieben, who has only one arm.  I am not astonished at him; for,
in the first place, I know how he lost his arm; and, in the second, he is
a friend and servant of the Princesse des Ursins: they expect to take him
at Lyons.  Sandrazky was at my toilette the day before yesterday; as he
looked melancholy, I asked him what was the matter?  He replied, "I am
ill with vexation: I love my wife, who is an Englishwoman, very tenderly,
and she is no less fond of me; but, as we have not the means of keeping
up an establishment, she must go into a convent.  This distresses me so
much that I am really very unwell."

I was grieved to hear this, and resolved to solicit my son for him.

My son sometimes does as is said in Atys,--[The opera of Atys, act ii.,
scene 3.]--"Vous pourriez aimer et descendre moins bas;" for when Jolis
was his rival, he became attached to one of his daughter's 'filles de
chambre', who hoped to marry Jolis because he was rich; for this reason
she received him better than my son, who, however, at last gained her
favour.  He afterwards took her away from his daughter, and had her
taught to sing, for she had a fine voice.

The printed letters of Cellamara disclose the whole of the conspiracy.
The Abbe Brigaut, too, it is said, begins to chatter about it.  This
affair has given me so much anxiety that I only sleep through mere
exhaustion.  My heart beats incessantly; but my son has not the least
care about it.  I beseech him, for God's sake, not to go about in coaches
at night, and he promises me he will not; but he will no more keep that
promise than he did when he made it to me before.

It is now eight days since the Duc du Maine and his wife were arrested
(29th December).  She was at Paris, and her husband at Sceaux in his
chateau.  One of the four captains of the King's Guard arrested the
Duchess, the Duke was arrested only by a lieutenant of the Body Guard.
The Duchess was immediately taken to Dijon and her husband to the
fortress of Doullens.  I found Madame d'Orleans much more calm than I had
expected.  She was much grieved, and wept bitterly; but she said that,
since her brother was convicted, she must confess he had done wrong; that
he was, with his wife, the cause of his own misfortune, but that it was
no less painful to her to know that her own brother had thus been
plotting against her husband.  His guilt was proved upon three points:
first, in a paper under the hand of the Spanish Ambassador, the Prince of
Cellamara, in which he imparted to Alberoni that the Duchesse and the Duc
du Maine were at the head of the conspiracy; he tells him how many times
he has seen them, by whose means, and in what place; then he says that he
has given money to the Duc du Maine to bribe certain persons, and he
mentions the sum.  There are already two men in the Bastille who confess
to have received money, and others who have voluntarily stated that they
conducted the Ambassador to the Duke and Duchess, and negotiated
everything between the parties.  The greater part of their servants have
been sent to the Bastille.  The Princess is deeply afflicted; and,
although the clearest proofs are given of her children's crime, she
throws all the blame upon the Duke, her grandson, who, she says, has
accused them falsely, because he hates them, and she has refused to see
him.  The Duchess is more moderate in her grief.  The little Princesse de
Conti heartily pities her sister and weeps copiously, but the elder
Princess does not trouble herself about her uncle and aunt.

The Cardinals cannot be arrested, but they may be exiled; therefore the
Cardinal de Polignac has been ordered to retire to one of his abbeys and
to remain there.  It was love that turned his head.  He was formerly a
great friend of my son's, and he did not change until he became attached
to that little hussy.

Magni

     [Foucault de Magni, introducteur des ambassadeurs, and son of a
     Counsellor of State.  Duclos says he was a silly fellow, who never
     did but, one wise thing, which was to run away.]

has not yet been taken; he flies from one convent to another.  He stayed
with the Jesuits a long time.



                                   1719

They say that the Duchesse du Maine used all her persuasions to induce
her husband to fly; but that he replied, as neither of them had written
anything with their own hands, nothing could be proved against them;
while, by flying, they would confess their guilt.  They did not consider
that M. de Pompadour could say enough to cause their arrest.

The Duchess's fraternal affection is a much stronger passion than her
love for her children.

A letter of Alberoni's to the lame bastard has been intercepted, in which
is the following passage: "As soon as you declare war in France spring
all your mines at once."

What enrages me is that Madame d'Orleans and the Princess would still
make one believe that the Duc and Duchesse du Maine are totally innocent,
although proofs of their guilt are daily appearing.  The Duchess came to
me to beg I would procure an order for her daughter's people, that is,
her dames d'honneur, her femmes de chambre, and her hair-dresser, to be
sent to her.  I could not help laughing, and I said, "Mademoiselle de
Launay is an intriguer and one of the persons by whom the whole affair
was conducted."

But she replied, "The Princess is at the Bastille."--"I know it," I said;
"and well she has deserved it."  This almost offended the Princess.

The Duchesse du Maine said openly that she should never be happy until
she had made an end of my son.  When her mother reproached her with it,
she did not deny it, but only replied, "One says things in a passion
which one does not mean to do."

Although the plot has been discovered, the conspirators have not yet been
all taken.  My son says, jokingly, "I have hold of the monster's head and
tail, but I have not yet got his body"

I can guess how it happened that the mercantile letters stated my son to
have been arrested; it is because the conspirators intended to have done
so, and two days later it would have taken place.  It must have been
persons of this party, therefore, who wrote to England.

When Schlieben was seized, he said, "If Monsieur the Regent does not take
pity upon me, I am ruined."

He was for a long time at the Spanish Court, where he was protected by
the Princesse des Ursins.  He has some wit, can chatter well, and is an
excellent spy for such a lady.  The persons who had arrested him took him
to Paris by the diligence, without saying a word.  On reaching Paris the
diligence was ordered to the Bastille; the poor travellers not knowing
why, were in a great fright, and expected all to be locked up, but were
not a little pleased at being set free.  Sandrazky is not very clever; he
is a Silesian.  He married an Englishwoman, whose fortune he soon
dissipated, for he is a great gambler.

The Duchesse du Maine has fallen sick with rage, and that old Maintenon
is said to be afflicted by the affair more than any other person.  It was
by her fault that they fell into this scrape, for she put it into their
heads that it was unjust they should not reign, and that the kingdom
belonged as much to them as King Solomon's did to him.

Madame d'Orleans weeps for her brother by day and night.

They tried to arrest the Duc de Saint-Aignan at Pampeluna; but he
effected his escape with his wife, and in disguise.

When they carried away the Duc du Maine, he said, "I shall soon return,
for my innocence will be speedily manifested; but I only speak for
myself, my wife may not come back quite so soon."

Madame d'Orleans cannot believe that her brother has been engaged in a
conspiracy; she says it must have been his wife who acted in his name.
The Princess, on the other hand, believes that her daughter is innocent,
and that the Duc du Maine alone has carried on the plot.

The factum is not badly drawn up.  Our priest can write well enough when
he likes; he drew it up, and my son corrected it.

The more the affair is examined, the more clearly does the guilt of the
Duke and Duchess appear; for three days ago, Malezieux, who is in the
Bastille, gave up his writing-desk.  The first thing that was found in it
was a projet, which Malezieux had written at the Duchess's bedside, and
which Cardinal de Polignac had corrected with his own hand.  Malezieux
pretends that it is a Spanish letter, addressed to the Duchess, and that
he had translated it for her, with the assistance of the Cardinal de
Polignac; and yet the letters of Alberoni to the Prince de Cellamara
refer so directly to this projet that it is easy to see that they spring
from the same source.

The Duchesse du Maine has made the Princess believe that the Duke (of
Bourbon) was the cause of all this business, so that now he dare not
appear before the latter, although he has always behaved with great
respect and friendship towards her; while the Duc and Duchesse du Maine,
on the contrary, have been engaged in a law-suit against her for five
years.  It was not until after the Princess had inherited the property of
Monsieur de Vendome, that this worthy couple insinuated themselves into
her good graces.

The Parliament is reconciled to my son, and has pronounced its decree,
which is favourable to him, and which is another proof that the Duc du
Maine had excited it against him.

The Jesuits have probably been also against my son; for all those who
have declared against the Constitution cannot be friendly to him; they
have, however, kept so quiet that nothing can be brought against them.
They are cunning old fellows.
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