for Omer Talon (
Mém. vol. ii. p. 332) tells us that ‘le duc d'Orléans n'avoit point de fauteuil, mais un simple siège pliant, à cause que nous étions dans la chambre du roi.’ In the subsequent year, the scene not being in the king's room, the same writer describes ‘M. le duc d'Orléans assis dans un fauteuil.’
Ibid. vol. iii. p. 95. Compare
Le Vassor,
Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. viii. p. 310. Voltaire (
Dict. Philos. art.
Cérémonies) says: ‘Le fauteuil à bras, la chaise à dos, le tabouret, la main droite et la main gauche, ont été pendant plusieurs siècles d'importants objets de politique, et d'illustres sujets de querelles.’
Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xxxvii. p. 486. The etiquette of the ‘fauteuil’ and ‘chaise’ is explained in
Mém. de Genlis, vol. x. p. 287.
420
See Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 309, 310.
421
See a list of those it was proper for the queen to kiss, in Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. p. 318.
422
Mém. de Omer Talon, vol. i. pp. 217–219. The Prince de Condé hotly asserted, that at a Te Deum ‘il ne pouvait être assis en autre place que dans la première chaire.’ This was in 1642.
423
For a quarrel respecting the ‘drap de pied,’ see Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 249.
424
A very serious dispute was caused by the claim of the Prince de Marsillac, for ‘permission d'entrer dans le Louvre en carrosse.’ Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 367–389.
425
Mém. de Pontchartrain, vol. i. pp. 422, 423, at the coronation of Louis XIII. Other instances of difficulties caused by questions of precedence, will be found in Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. iii. pp. 23, 24, 437; and even in the grave work of Sully, Œconomies Royales, vol. vii. p. 126, vol. viii. p. 395; which should be compared with De Thou, Hist. Univ. vol. ix. pp. 86, 87.
426
Mém. de Lenet, vol. i. pp. 378, 379. Lenet, who was a great admirer of the nobles, relates all this without the faintest perception of its absurdity. I ought not to omit a terrible dispute, in 1652, respecting the recognition of the claims of the Duke de Rohan (Mém. de Conrart, pp. 151, 152); nor another dispute, in the reign of Henry IV., as to whether a duke ought to sign his name before a marshal, or whether a marshal should sign first. De Thou, Hist. Univ. vol. xi. p. 11.
427
This difficulty, in 1652, caused a violent quarrel between the two dukes, and ended in a duel in which the Duke de Nemours was killed, as is mentioned by most of the contemporary writers. See Mém. de Montglat, vol. ii. p. 357; Mém. de la Rochefoucauld, vol. ii. p. 172; Mém. de Conrart, pp. 172–175; Mém. de Retz, vol. ii. p. 203; Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. iii. p. 437.
428
Pontchartrain, one of the ministers of state, writes, under the year 1620: ‘En ce même temps s'étoit mû un très-grand différend entre M. le prince de Condé et M. le comte de Soissons, sur le sujet de la serviette que chacun d'eux prétendoit devoir présenter au roi quand ils se rencontreroient tous deux près sa majesté.’ Mém. de Pontchartrain, vol. ii. p. 295. Le Vassor, who gives a fuller account (Règne de Louis XIII, vol. iii. pp. 536, 537), says, ‘Chacun des deux princes du sang, fort échauffez à qui feroit une fonction de maître d'hôtel, tiroit la serviette de son côté, et la contestation augmentoit d'une manière dont les suites pouvoient devenir fâcheuses.’ But the king interposing, ‘ils furent donc obligez de céder: mais ce ne fut pas sans se dire l'un à l'autre des paroles hautes et menaçantes.’
429
According to some authorities, a man ought to be a duke before his wife could be allowed to meddle with the queen's shift; according to other authorities, the lady-in-waiting, whoever she might be, had the right, unless a princess happened to be present. On these alternatives, and on the difficulties caused by them, compare Mém. de Saint-Simon, 1842, vol. vii. p. 125, with Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. pp. 28, 276, 277.
430
Also connected with the institution of chivalry, both being cognate symptoms of the same spirit.
431
Even just before the French Revolution, these feelings still existed. See, for instance the extraordinary details in Campan, Mém. sur Marie-Antoinette, vol. i. pp. 98, 99; which should be compared with an extract from Prudhomme's Mirror de Paris, in Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, 1850, p. 251, no. 165.
432
Ludlow thus expresses the sentiments which induced him to make war upon the crown: ‘The question in dispute between the king's party and us being, as I apprehend, whether the king should govern as a god by his will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts? or whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and live under a government derived from their own consent? being fully persuaded, that an accommodation with the king was unsafe to the people of England, and unjust and wicked in the nature of it.’ Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 230. Compare Whitelocke's spirited speech to Christina, in Journal of the Swedish Embassy, vol. i. p. 238; and see pp. 390, 391.
433
On the disgraceful subserviency of the most eminent men of letters, see Capefigue's Louis XIV., vol. i. pp. 41, 42, 116; and on the feeling of the people, Le Vassor, who wrote late in the reign of Louis XIV., bitterly says, ‘mais les Français, accoutumés à l'esclavage, ne sentent plus la pesanteur de leurs chaînes.’ Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. vi. p. 670. Foreigners were equally amazed at the general, and still more, at the willing servility. Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter dated February 1704–5, passes a glowing eulogy upon liberty; but he adds, that in France ‘you will hardly find this argument understood; for whatever flashes may now and then appear, I never yet knew one single Frenchman a free man.’ Forster's Original Letters of Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury, 1830, p. 205. In the same year, De Foe makes a similar remark in regard to the French nobles, Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 209; and, in 1699, Addison writes from Blois a letter which strikingly illustrates the degradation of the French. Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 80. Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 365, on ‘the gross excess of flattery to which the French have run, beyond the examples of former ages, in honour of their king.’
434
The terms of this compact between the crown and the church are fairly stated by M. Ranke: ‘Wir sehen, die beiden Gewalten unterstützten einander. Der König ward von den Einwirkungen der weltlichen, der Clerus von der unbedingten Autorität der geistlichen Gewalt des Papstthums freigesprochen.’ Die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 168.
435
This part of his character is skilfully drawn by Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 43.
436
Flasson supposes that the first persecuting laws were in 1679: ‘Des l'année 1679 les concessions faites aux protestans avaient été graduellement restreintes.’ Diplomatie Française, vol. iv. p. 92. But the fact is, that these laws began in 1662, the year after the death of Mazarin. See Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 167; Benoist, Edit. de Nantes, vol. iii. pp. 460–462, 481. In 1667, a letter from Thynne to Lord Clarendon (Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 446) mentions ‘the horrid persecutions the reformed religion undergoes in France;’ and Locke, who travelled in France in 1675 and 1676, states in his Journal (King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 110) that the Protestants were losing ‘every day some privilege or other.’
