I had just climbed into my carriage where Mme de Saint-Simon was awaiting me, when I was utterly surprised to see about to pass in front of it the carriage of S. Murat, so well-known by armies for his valor, and for that of his entire family. His sons had covered themselves with honor by traits worthy of antiquity; one, who lost a leg, shines everywhere with beauty; another son died, leaving parents who were inconsolable; so much so that although displaying pretensions as unbearable as those of the Bouillons, they did not lose the esteem of respectable people as the Bouillons had.
I might have been less surprised by this matter of the carriage perhaps, if I had remembered some rather strange suggestions, such as at one of the last marlis5 where Mme Murat had tried the ruse of making way for Mme de Saint-Simon, but very equivocally and without putting on a show of rank, saying that there was less air there, that Mme de Saint-Simon feared air but that Fagon on the other hand had prescribed it for her; Mme de Saint-Simon had not let herself be taken in by these bold words and had briskly replied that she chose that place not because she feared the air, but because it was her place and that if Mme Murat made as if to have one, she and the other duchesses would go ask Mme the Duchesse de Bourgogne to complain to the King.
To which Princess Murat had said not a word, except that she knew what was due to Mme de Saint-Simon, who was strongly applauded for her firmness by the duchesses present and by the Princess d’Espinoy. Despite this very singular marli, which had remained in my memory and where I clearly grasped that Mme Murat had wanted to test the waters, I believed this time in a mistake, so strong did the pretension seem to me; but seeing that Prince Murat’s horses were getting ahead, I sent a gentleman to ask him to make them fall back, to whom it was replied that Prince Murat would have done so with great pleasure had he been alone, but that he was with Mme Murat, and some vague words about the fancy of a foreign prince.
Deeming that this was not the place to demonstrate the triviality of such an enormous undertaking, I gave the order to my coachman to spur on my horses, which did some little damage to Prince Murat’s carriage in passing.
But, thoroughly worked up over the Le Moine business, I had already forgotten that of the carriage, important as it was for what concerns the smooth functioning of the justice and honor of the kingdom, when on the very day of the parvulo at Saint-Cloud, the Ducs de Mortemart and de Chevreuse came to warn me, as one who had at heart the fairest concern for the ancient and indubitable privileges of dukes, the true foundation of the monarchy, that Prince Murat, to whom the royal court had already given the dangerous assurance of its favor, had claimed the royal hand for dinner, claiming precedence over the Duc de Gramont, supporting this fine claim on being the grandson of a man who had been King of the Two Sicilies, as he had explained to M. d’Orléans through Effiat, and had been the chief support of the court of Monsieur his father, so that M. the Duc d’Orléans, utterly embarrassed and moreover not having that clear, clean, profound training whereby a decisive person reduces such whims to nothingness, had not dared to make any definitive decision about this, but had replied that he would see, that he would speak about it with the Duchesse d’Orléans.
Strange irony of going off to entrust the most vital interests of the affairs of state, which rests on the privileges of dukes so long as they are not interfered with, to a person who was connected with them only by the most shameful ties and had never known what was proper to herself, much less to Monsieur her husband and to the entire peerage. This very curious and unprecedented reply had been relayed by Princess Soutzo to Messieurs de Mortemart and de Chevreuse who, surprised to the extreme, had immediately come to find me.
It is common enough knowledge that she is the only woman who, for my unhappiness, had succeeded in making me emerge from the retirement in which I had been dwelling since the death of the Dauphin and the Dauphine. One scarcely knows oneself the reason for these kinds of preferences, and I could not say how she succeeded, where so many others had failed. She looked like Minerva, as she is represented in the beautiful miniatures on the pendant earrings my mother left me. Her charms had captivated me and I hardly ever stirred from my room in Versailles except to go see her.
But I will wait for another part of these Memoirs that will be especially devoted to the Comtesse de Chevigné, to speak at greater length about her and her husband, who had greatly distinguished himself by his valor and was one of the most honest people I have ever known. I had had almost no commerce with M. de Mortemart since the bold cabal he had initiated against me at the Duchesse de Beauvilliers’ to make me lose the King’s esteem.
Never was there a duller mind, one more inclined to be contrary, more tempted to strengthen this contrariness with gibes without any foundation whatsoever, gibes that he then went on to peddle by himself. As for M. de Chevreuse, companion to Monsieur, he was another kind of man and he has been too often spoken of elsewhere here for me to have to go back over his infinite qualities, his science, his kindness, his gentleness, his word that was always kept. But he was a man who, as they say, made mountains out of molehills, a man to dig holes in the moon.
We have seen the hours I spent trying to show him the flimsiness of his fantasy about the antiquity of Chevreuse and the fits of rage he almost displayed to the chancellor for building Chaulnes. But in the end, they were both dukes, and very justly attached to the prerogatives of their rank; and since they knew that I myself was more punctilious about ducal prerogatives than anyone at court, they had come to find me because I was moreover a special friend of M. the Duc d’Orléans, and had never had in mind anything but the good of this prince, and had never abandoned him when the intrigues of La Maintenon and the Maréchal de Villeroy left him alone in the Palais Royal.
I tried to reason with M. the Duc d’Orléans, I represented to him the insult he was showing not only to dukes, who would all feel wounded in the person of the Duc de Gramont, but to common sense, by letting Prince Murat, like the Ducs de la Tremoïlle earlier, under the empty pretext of being a foreign prince and because his grandfather, so well-known for his bravura, was King of Naples for a few years, take during the parvulo at Saint-Cloud the hand he would make a point not to demand later on at Versailles, at Marly, and that it would serve as a vehicle to being called Highness, since we know where these ridiculous and base ways of princery lead when they are not nipped in the bud.
We have seen the effect of this in Messieurs de Turenne and de Vendôme. More authority and a more extensive knowledge were necessary than M. the Duc d’Orléans possessed. Never however was a case simpler, clearer, or easier to explain, more impossible, more abominable to contradict. On one hand, a man who cannot go back more than two generations without getting lost in a night where nothing of note appears; on the other, the head of an illustrious family known for a thousand years, father and son of two Marshals of France, never having admitted any but the greatest alliances. The Le Moine affair itself did not involve interests so vital for France.
During the same period of time, Delaire married a Rohan and rather oddly took the name of Comte de Cambacérès. The Marquis d’Albuféra, who was a good friend of mine as was his mother, filed a number of complaints that, despite the minuscule and, as we will see later on, well-deserved esteem the King had for him, remained without effect. So now he is one of those fine Comtes de Cambacérès (not to mention the Vicomte Vigier, whom we imagine still back in Les Bains where he arose), like the counts de Montgomery and de Brye, whom ignorant Frenchmen think of as descended from G. de Montgomery, so famous for his duel under Henri II, and as belonging to the de Briey family, which included my friend the Comtesse de Briey, who has often figured in these Memoirs and who jokingly called the new Comtes de Brye, who at least were gentlemen of good stock although of lower lineage, les non brils.6
Another, greater marriage delayed the arrival of the King of England, one that concerned more than just this country.
