He loved him so much that if he sometimes refused the queen any favor she might have asked of him, the Count d’Artois had only to add his solicitations to those of the queen, and the king had no longer the firmness to refuse.
It was, in fact, the reign of amiable men. Monsieur de Calonne, one of the most amiable men in the world, was comptroller-general. It was Calonne who said to the queen,—
“Madame, if it is possible, it is done; and if it is impossible, it shall be done.”
From the very day on which this charming reply was circulated in all the drawing-rooms of Paris and Versailles, the Red Book, which every one had thought closed forever, was reopened.
The queen buys Saint Cloud.
The king buys Rambouillet.
It is no longer the king who has lady favorites, it is the queen. Mesdames Diana and Jules de Polignac cost as much to France as La Pompadour and La Dubarry.
The queen is so good!
A reduction is proposed in the salaries of the high officers of the court. Some of them make up their minds to it. But one of the most habitual frequenters of the palace obstinately refuses to submit to this reduction; it is Monsieur de Coigny. He meets the king in one of the corridors, a terrible scene occurs, the king runs away, and in the evening says laughingly,—
“Upon my word, I believe if I had not yielded, Coigny would have beaten me.”
The king is so good!
And then the fate of a kingdom sometimes depends upon a very trivial circumstance; the spur of a page, for instance.
Louis XV. dies; who is to succeed Monsieur d’Aiguillon?
The king, Louis XVI., is for Machaut. Machaut is one of the ministers who had sustained the already tottering throne. Mesdames, that is to say, the king’s aunts, are for Monsieur de Maurepas, who is so amusing, and who writes such pretty songs. He wrote three volumes of them at Pontchartrain, which he called his memoirs.
All this is a steeple-chase affair. The question was as to who should arrive first,—the king and queen at Arnouville, or mesdames at Pontchartrain.
The king has the power in his own hands; the chances are therefore in his favor.
He hastens to write:—
Set out, the very moment you receive this, for Paris; I am waiting for you.
He slips his despatch into an envelope, and on the envelope he writes,—
“Monsieur le Comte de Machaut, at Arnouville.”
A page of the king’s stables is sent for; the royal missive is put into his hands, and he is ordered to mount a horse, and to go to Arnouville full speed.
And now that the page is despatched, the king can receive mesdames.
Mesdames,—the same whom the king their father, as has been seen in “Balsamo,” called Loque, Chiffe, and Graille, three names eminently aristocratic,—mesdames are waiting at a door opposite to that by which the page goes out, until he shall have left the room.
The page once gone out, mesdames may go in.
They go in, entreat the king in favor of Monsieur Maurepas; all this is a mere question of time; the king does not like to refuse mesdames anything,—the king is so good!
He will accede to their request when the page shall have got so far on his journey that no one can come up with him.
He contested the point with mesdames, his eyes fixed on the time-piece. Half an hour will be sufficient for him. The time-piece will not deceive him. It is the time-piece which he himself regulates.
Twenty minutes have elapsed, and he yields.
“Let the page be overtaken,” said he, ” and all shall be as you please.”
Mesdames rush out of the room; they will despatch a man on horseback; he shall kill a horse, two horses, ten horses, but the page must be overtaken.
All these determinations are unnecessary; not a single horse will be killed.
In going down the staircase one of the page’s spurs struck against one of the stone steps and broke short off. How could any one go at full speed with only one spur?