Ch. 11: The Duchess of Orléans, Pt. 1

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section fourteen of Women of Versailles The Court of Louis
the fourteenth by Artur Leon Ambert de Saint Ament, translated
by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. This librovox recording is in the
public domain. Read by Pamel and Agami, Chapter eleven, The
Duchess of or Leon, Part One. One of the causes

(00:24):
which made Madame de Maintaillan profer Saint Cyr to Versailles
was that she believed herself to be loved at Saint Cyr,
while at Versailles she felt the shafts of malevolence and
hatred pierce her through an apparent deference and obsequious protestations
of devotion and respect. Certain persons who saw her continually

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and manifested the greatest regard for her, detested her cordially,
and her profound knowledge of the human heart made her
always aware of it. Chief among these secrets antipathies existing
in a latent condition against Madame de mantineand must be reckoned.
The violent and relentless enmity of the Prince's palatine, the

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second wife of the Duke of Orleon. The accusations brought
against the wife of Louis the fourteenth by this implacable
German woman, are so exaggerated and unlikely that on the
whole they redound to the credit of her at whom
they were aimed. The Amsterdam libels, the Protestant pamphlets never

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invented such enormities. They are a torrent of insults, an
orgy of hatred, the slang of Billingsgate in the finest
palace of the world. They are columnies which stop at nothing.
If one were to believe the Prince's palatine, this nasty
old thing, this wicked devil, this filthy, shriveled up old Mantenon,

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would be a go between a procurus, a poisoner alocusta.
The woman who gave herself up to such furious diatribes
in her correspondence is assuredly one of the most singular
figures in the feminine gallery of Versailles. Her physique, her mind,
her style, her character all bear a stamp that is unique,

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resembling no one else and contrasting strongly with all who
surrounded her. She serves as a kind of set off
to the fine and delicate beauties of her time. To
our mind, no woman has shown herself more fully in
her letters than the Prince's palatine. She is all there,

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with her defects in her qualities, her curious mixture of
austere morals and cynical language, the haughty ways of a
great lady, and the expressions of a woman of the people,
her pretended disdain for human grandeurs, and her fierce passion
for the prerogatives of her rank. This is the princess

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whose portrait has been so truthfully painted by San Simon
Frank and upright good and beneficent, grand in all her manners,
and little to the last degree in all that concerns
what she thinks her due. A woman of masculine bearing,
not coquettish, not desirous to please, honest in her morals,

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but shameless in her speech, somewhat rigid at marshal in
her character, and tastes loving dogs horses in the chase,
hard to herself her own doctor in case she is
a trifle indisposed able to walk two full leagues. It
is not poetical, sentimental dreamy Germany, which her very original

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type represents so exactly, but Germany, under its rustic, almost
savage aspects, it energy and rudeness, its antiquated prejudices, its
amologam of simplicity and arrogance, of credulity and pride. The
letters of the Princess Palatine lose much of their savor

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when translated into French. It is only in German that
they have that smack of terror, that impulsiveness, that tone
now cynical, now burlesque, which is their chief merit. Exaggerated
and passionate as they are, they are worth consulting even
after the memoirs of the Duc de Saint Semon. Doubtless

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Madame has none of the genius of this French tacitus,
but there is more than one analogy in their styles
and their destinies. They are both of them essentially doubtful witnesses,
for each was biased and could not judge impartially in
cases which nearly concerned their spites and prejudices. But neither

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of them even sought to hide his or her partiality. Hence,
nothing is easier than to find the truth which underlies
their falsehoods. If she has not the genius of Saint Simon,
Madame has his wrath and indignation and his hatreds Like him,

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she is obliged to receive her enemies well, to put
continual constraint on herself, to live with the bastards whom
she execrates, to salute the Morganatic queen, whom she has
a horror of. She is an honest woman, as he
is an honest man. She loves right, justice and truth

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as he does. Like him, she writes in secret and
consoles herself for a perpetual constraint by exaggerating the liberty
of style. Like him, she wrecks her vengeance by means
of pen and ink. It is from her curious letters
that we shall try to describe her character. Daughter of

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the Elector Palatine Charles Lewis and of the Princess Charlotte
of Hesse Cassel, the second wife of the Duke of Orleon,
was born at the castle of Heidelberg. As the child,
she preferred guns to dolls, and thus displayed already the
masculine aspects of her character. She was nineteen years old

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when her marriage with the brother of Louis the fourteenth
was decided on she set out for France in sixteen
seventy one. Three bishops were sent to the frontier to
instruct her in the Catholic religion, which was henceforth to
be her own. The three prelates began their work at
mess and terminated it on their arrival at Versailles. The Princess,

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who possibly regretted her Protestantism somewhat, said that she had
never found her instructors in perfect accord with each other,
and that she had taken a little of their doctrines
from all three. The new Duchess of Orleon was the
opposite in all respects of her over whom Bassuet had
preached so touching a funeral sermon. The court, which had

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admired the very type of elegance and beauty in the
first Madame, found in the second that of rudeness and ugliness.
The one was as coquettish as the other was lacking
in the wish to please the Princess. Palatine took a
sort of delight in exaggerating what she thought of her
own physique. I have big, hanging cheeks and a large face,

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she wrote. Moreover, my figure is very small, short, and thick.
Some total. I am an ugly little creature. If I
had not a good heart, no one would put up
with me anywhere To know whether my eyes display intelligence,
it would be necessary to examine them with a microscope

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or with glasses, Otherwise it would be difficult to judge.
Probably no such villainous hands as mine could be found
anywhere on earth. The King remarked as much to me,
and made me laugh heartily. For never having been able
to flatter myself conscientiously on having anything pretty about me,

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I have adopted the plan of being the first to
laugh at my ugliness, and it has succeeded very well.
If the Princess Palatine did not dazzle the court, the court,
on the other hand, did not dazzle her. Versay in
its splendors, left her unmoved. I like better, she wrote,

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to see trees and fields than the finest palaces. I
like a kitchen garden better than gardens adorned with statues
and fountains. A streamlet pleases me more than sumptuous cascades.
In a word, all that is natural is infinitely more
to my taste than works of art and magnificence. They

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please own at the first glance, and as soon as
one is accustomed to them, they create fatigue, and one
cares about them no longer. What Madame loved and regretted
was her German Rhine the hills, where as a child
she had seen the sun rise and had eaten bread
and cherries. The youthful nobility of France, in spite of

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its elegance, luxury and animation, had no attraction for her.
All the young people in general said she are horribly
debauched and addicted to every vice, not excepting lying in deceit.
They consider it a shame to pique themselves on being
men of honor. They do nothing but drink, wallow in debauchery,

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and talk obscenely. You can easily judge from this what
great pleasure honest people must enjoy here. But I am
afraid that if I carry my details concerning the court
any farther, I shall call as you the same disgust
that I often experience myself, and that this disgust may

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end by becoming a contagious disease. Madame's husband was not
a consolation to her, because criticizing him with legitimate severity,
she did not profess more than a moderate esteem and
affection for him. She never forgave him for surrounding himself
with manicic used of having assassinated his first wife, the

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beautiful and poetic Henrietta of England, and showing the greatest
contempt for the Chevalier de Lorraine. She did not feel
in safety herself. She suffered from the character of her husband, feeble, timid,
governed by favorites and often misled by them, annoying and

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incapable of keeping any secret, suspicious, mistrustful, sowing discords in
his court for the sake of confusion, to find out something,
and often also to amaze himself. For the Prince's palatine
religion was an insufficient solace for the annoyances and vexations
of which she was incessantly the victim. Born in the

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Protestant religion, she did not well comprehend the mystic and
sacred joys of Catholic worship. Although she was not a
free thinker, she made occasional reflections and waggeries which seemed
to forebode the philosophers of the following century. She remained
a good practical Christian, but she did not consider all

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priests to be in the odor of sanctity. She had
a horror of mixing religion with politics, and the revocation
of the Edict of nant, which was admired by the clergy,
shocked all her sentiments and instincts. I must confess. She
wrote that when I hear the eulogies that are given

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the Great Man from the pulpit for having persecuted the reformed,
it always annoys me. I cannot endure to hear people
praise what is bad. It is inconceivable. She wrote again,
how simple the Great Man is in matters of religion,
because he is not so in other things. That comes

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from his never having studied religious things, never having read
the Bible, and honestly believing what has told him on
this subject. The grandeur of Bassuet's ideas, the majesty of
a policy derived from the scriptures, had few attractions. For
Madame I cannot endure, wrote she. Kings who imagine they

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please God by praying, It was not for that He
placed them on the throne to do good, exercise right
and justice. Restrain the clergy, and make them keep to
their prayers without meddling in other things. That is what
ought to be the true devotion of kings. Let a
king say his prayers morning and night. That is sufficient

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for the rest. He ought to think of making his
subjects as happy as he can. Whatever bore the slightest
resemblance to religious persecution aroused an energetic protest in the
Princess Palatine. She found it deplorable that no one could
make Louis the fourteenth understand that religion was instituted rather

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to preserve union among men, than to make them torment
and persecute each other. King James, she added, said that
our Lord Jesus Christ had certainly been seen beating men
to drive them from the temple, but he was nowhere
found maltreating them to make them enter it. End of

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Section fourteen.