Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride; but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped it.If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars, too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man almost as much as they said they did.If, when he appeared in his five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the Siamese ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling about his person:
he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea.Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.
"On n'est plus heureux a notre age," says the old man, to one of his old generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he rewards him with honors, as if he had come from a victory.There is, if you will, something magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this stout protest against Fate.Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after armies march out to meet fiery Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman, and disappear in the smoke of the enemies' cannon.Even at Versailles you may almost hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have forgotten their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old Louis plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender.All the gold and silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely;and, bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, promises, if his general is defeated, to place himself at the head of his nobles, and die King of France.Indeed, after a man, for sixty years, has been performing the part of a hero, some of the real heroic stuff must have entered into his composition, whether he would or not.When the great Elliston was enacting the part of King George the Fourth, in the play of "The Coronation," at Drury Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly his suavity and majestic demeanor, at which Elliston, inflamed by the popular loyalty (and by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he was in the habit of indulging), burst into tears, and spreading out his arms, exclaimed: "Bless ye, bless ye, my people!" Don't let us laugh at his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and yelled "bravo!" in praise of him.The tipsy old manager did really feel that he was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with delight and attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely were uttering the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in reverencing these and other articles of costume.In this fifth act, then, of his long royal drama, old Louis performed his part excellently; and when the curtain drops upon him, he lies, dressed majestically, in a becoming kingly attitude, as a king should.
The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neighboring Parc aux Cerfs would afford better illustrations of his reign.The life of his great grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the necessary conditions of divinity, and being of a jovial, companionable turn, aspired not beyond manhood.Only in the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did David.War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his simple taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate and the frying of pancakes.Look, here is the room called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his mistress's breakfast:--here is the little door through which, from her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man.
But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled upon him.What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs: every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state.He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed it was high time that he should die.And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were raised to his memory.
As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as the way is.When the king dies, the officer appointed opens his chamber window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est mort, breaks his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming, vive le Roi! Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling vive le Roi! and the officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great clock in the Cour de Marbre to the hour of the king's death.This old Louis had solemnly ordained; but the Versailles clock was only set twice: there was no shouting of Vive le Roi when the successor of Louis XV.mounted to heaven to join his sainted family.
