258 VIVE DE MAUREPAS! he has had moments of gaiety, and has eaten some rice-cream. The King came to see him at six o'clock this evening, and insisted that Madame de Maurepas, who was in the room, should remain seated while he was present. His Majesty remained with M. de Maurepas about a quarter of an hour, and then withdrew, fearing to fatigue the invalid too much." Until September in that year de Maurepas had been still blithe, and seen by the people. The Court chronicles mention his having in that month dined with the Count d'Estaing at the "Redoute Chinoise," and allude to his having gone afterwards with that hero to the "Varietés Amusantes," where they saw the "Fou Raisonnable” acted. De Maurepas courted popularity to the last, and, shining in the sight of the people of Paris by the borrowed light of d'Estaing's glory, he was hailed by them, "Vive d'Estaing!" "Vive de Maurepas!" The prime minister of the King of France, the last time he appeared in public, was thus indebted for applause to the champion of American liberty. But Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were never so beloved by their people as at this time of their lives. The tradespeople of Paris, THE BLACK BANNER. 259 elated by American victory, vied with each other in rendering homage to the Dauphin. Each of the trades companies brought an offering to Versailles for the infant. Bootmakers presented the most wonderful pair of smallest boots. Tailors, a miniature uniform; even butchers, bakers, and masons of Paris brought a gift to Versailles for the Dauphin. Again the King stood in the balcony of Versailles, where he had stood six years before, when the people (excited by the priests and the parliament against his Finance Comptroller, Turgot) had pressed up to the gates of the château, clamouring for bread; and where, five years before that insurrection, his grandfather had stood, looking at the popular fêtes in the grounds below upon the occasion of his marriage. It pleased Louis XVI. to see the trades deputations arrive on the terrace below the balcony. Each deputation carried a banner emblematic of the trade it represented; but, suddenly, amongst these banners of gay and various colours appeared a black one, displaying the hideous device of a skull and crossed bones. At the same moment that this black banner appeared, the King's aunt, the Princesse Sophie, presented herself before his Majesty 260 RE-APPEARANCE OF MESMER. in a state of anger and trepidation at the gravediggers of Paris having presumed to join the procession formed by the different corporations. Thus, as on the occasion of his marriage fêtes, the mind of Louis XVI. was again depressed by a bad omen. The soldiers on guard quickly separated the gravediggers from the other companies, but not before their inopportune appearance had overshadowed the joy of the King. A month after the Dauphin's birth, de Maurepas died. He was in his eighty-first year when he expired in his apartments at Versailles, having held various offices in the cabinet at various times since his eighteenth year. The King was deeply affected at the loss of his prime minister, whom he had recalled from exile to be his adviser on his accession to the throne: "Alas!" said the King, "never again shall I hear my dear old friend's footstep in the room above my head!" Even Mesmer, who had just re-appeared in Paris, could not save de Maurepas, who had had such faith in him, and had presented his Memorial to the King three years before-although the * See chapter ii., vol. ii., of this narrative. CARDINAL DE BERNIS. 261 Journal d'un Observateur had just indignantly declared: "Degraded though M. le Docteur Mesmer be by a jealous Faculty-insulted though he be by lampooners who depict him as a charlatan, an impostor, and a wanton knave-he receives addresses which testify to his skill; he is presented with memorials to his honour; he is declared to be the benefactor of humanity." The portfolio of de Maurepas was temporarily confided to de Vergennes. The Church party hoped that Cardinal de Bernis (the predecessor of de Choiseul in office during the Seven Years' War) would succeed de Maurepas. During the twenty-two years which had elapsed since his resignation of office in the Cabinet of Versailles, de Bernis had lived at Rome, as "Protector of the * A memerial was published in Paris, 1781, concerning an extraordinary cure that Mesmer had worked on a young lady of Beauvais, to which memorial the following inscription was prefixed: : "MESMERO LIBERATORI. Ob Sanitatem incredibili modo restitutam, Quæ linguâ, pedibus, et oculis diu capta, Nullam ab arte spem aut viam sanitatis expectat. 262 A TYPE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. French Church." He was in favour at the Court of Spain, and it was now the policy of Versailles to conciliate Madrid. As a member of the French Academy, it was also hoped that the Cardinal would have devised some infallible means of checking the rapid spread of Voltairianism in France. Every new popular publication now breathed the spirit of Voltaire. There had been a time when de Bernis himself had been in French fashion as an author. Men and women still lived who had been converted from sin to sanctity by his sermons, and from gloom to gaiety by his poems. Versatile was de Bernis; a type of the eighteenth century, which had now grown old, was this churchman who had been the protégé of the Pompadour, and was now the pet of the Pope; who had power equally to excite the tears of a congregation in the cathedral, and the laughter of the company at Court; whose stérile abondance had been derided by Frederick of Prussia, at the very moment that his schemes had outwitted that monarch. Madame Adelaïde, the King's godmother, represented to his Majesty the advantages to be derived to and from the Church by the Cardinal's recall to the Cabinet. An on dit went the round of such of the public journals |