of his mistress not only affected him with passionate grief, but renewed in him the dread of hell torment which tortured him to the end of his days on similar occasions. The share which Madame de Mailly took in the King's affliction brought back some semblance of his former affection. But that consummate tempter the Duc de Richelieu was on the look-out for another liaison for his sovereign. That which existed between Madame de Mailly and the King had never been congenial to his own tastes, since Madame de Mailly had adopted the counsels and the resentments of her friend the Princesse de Charolais, who herself had had too intimate an acquaintance with the unprincipled nature of the heartless libertine.

The Duke consequently determined to give his sovereign a new mistress who should owe everything to himself, and be more capable of exercising political influence over the King. He took Madame de Tencin, an ancient favorite of the Regent, into his confidence, and the two together discussed the whole range of Court beauties, weighed the character and docility of each, and calculated the probable duration of her reign. Their choice, after much hesitation, fixed itself upon another Nesle, the youngest of all the sisters of Madame de Mailly, superior to all the rest in beauty, possessing an abundant portion of the family brilliance, with intelligence and ambition, and prepared by the unselfishness of her heart and the unscrupulousness of her conscience to make a pitiless use of her advantages.

The name of the lady was Madame de la Tournelle, now better known in history as the Duchess of Châteauroux. Her charms had already made a great impression on the King, who had seen her on a visit to the Duc d'Antin, and exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! quelle est belle" Her beauty was of a different character from that of her sisters. Her skin was of a dazzling whiteness, and her large blue eyes had a magic and fascinating brilliance; her form was not spare but graceful, and her lips fine and full; her smile was bright at once with infantile freshness and coquettish malice, while her bearing had all the lightness, and her manners all the dash, which distinguished

the rest of the Nesles. But her temper was widely different from that of her sisters, and the Duc de Richelieu had considerable difficulty in getting the King to play the lover in such fashion as would suit the pride of the imperious Madame de la Tournelle. The lady was willing enough to accept the position, but she was not willing to be a humble partner in the royal amours or to make such advances as Madame de Mailly had made before her. She required to be courted, to have the advances made to her in a manner satisfactory to her pride and her ambition, and to reign absolutely. The difficulty of Richelieu was to get the King, indolent, shy, and apprehensive of all efforta King accustomed to be served in love as in all else to speak the language of devotion, and to give himself the trouble to please a high spirited woman with all the caprice of beauty, and who determined to uphold her dignity even as mistress. Her first condition was the dismissal of Madame de Mailly. The anguish, the tears, the supplications of her sister availed nothing, and she succeeded in her purpose with stipulations of inflexible severity. After this she consented to receive a first declaration in her apartment of lady-in-waiting to the Queen at Versailles at dead of night; the King and Richelieu betook themselves to the rendezvous disguised in the large peruques of doctors of the time. The King came away from the interview more impassioned than before, and the reign of Madame de la Tournelle, soon after created Duchess of Châteauroux, commenced. dame de Mailly, even after her departure from Versailles, made one more effort to recover her position. She asked and obtained a last interview with the monarch she had loved; and the courtiers saw the discarded mistress come from the royal closet with heaving bosom, with eyes full of tears, and in a state of desolation which made her insensible to all about her. Behind her came the King, affecting a few parting words of heartless consolation, and speaking the last words she was destined to hear from him; the cruel dissimulation which was so characteristic of his nature never found a more striking utterance-"A tundi, à Choisy, madame la comtesse

Ma

á lundi

j'espère que vous ne me ferez pas attendre,'

when brought to bay by a crowd of arguments and persecuted with the display of her great conceptions. "Tant mieux, sire," the mistress replied, " il faut qu'un roi ressuscite."

Other court intrigues contributed at the same time to favor the views of Madame Châteauroux. Maurepas the chansonnier, the light frivolous minister whose name is associated with the disgrace of one and the disasters of two reigns, the Maréchal de Noailles, Richelieu, as well as all the courtiers who worshipped the star of the mistress, endeavored to get the King to take the field. Pure patriotism had little to do with any of their persuasions. Maurepas reckoned upon getting the King to determine to join the army through the influence of the favorite, and by a fine touch of subtlety trusted also subsequently to persuade the King not to take his mistress with him; he then hoped, since he himself would necessarily accompany his sovereign, to disengage him from any influence but his own. The Maréchale de Noailles, the old Duchess-now ninety-nine years of age, the mother of eleven daughters and ten sons, with more than a hundred living descendants-she whom the courtiers called the mother of the ten tribes of Israel, all anxiously looking to the Duchess and the King's favor to provide them with a new land of promise; she with all the tribe of the Noailles, in fact, were calculating ou the good things to be got if the King could be carried off to the camp of the Marshal, where the latter would have uncontrolled supervision of the despatch-boxes from Paris. Thus the King was, after long preparation, wound up to the pitch of resolve, and determined to join the army. Maurepas insinuated at the last moment that if Louis XV. would really play a kingly part, and gain the affection of his people, he must make one more sacrifice, and leave his mistresses at home. On this question there ensued a subtle game of intrigue, but in the end the Maurepas triumphed; the tears of the favorite were vain, and the King departed alone on the 2d of May,

1744.

The King reached the army, and all France burst out into hymns of praise. The King had visited the fortresses, the stores at the hospitals; he had tasted

the broth of the sick and the bread of the soldiers. He was busy and observant; wherever his presence was needed there he was found. He was accessible to officers of all rank. People repeated his reply to the Dutch ambassador, "Je vous ferai réponse en Flandre." Confidence was restored in the army, in the country. Men said to each other, "Now we have a King again," and repeated, "Et surtout il n'est pas question de femmes." Suddenly, however, the popular enthusiasm fell fifty degrees; the common soldiers grinned about the tent of the King, whence two splendid ladies in patches and rouge and magnificent attire were often seen to emerge to their carriage; ladies to whom very rough opprobrious names were given, and concerning whom scornful and satirical chansons were bandied about the camp. A murmur of indignation ran through France; the hopes of the nation were deceived.

Madame de Châteauroux had rejoined the King at Lille. With her came also Madame Laraguais and a bevy of court ladies. The two sisters followed in the King's wake without any concealment, while the grand marechal des logis preceded them, to prepare the communication between the King's lodgings and those of his mistresses. Then ensued the most striking incident of the latter days of royalty in France, when the sudden and nearly fatal illness of the King at Metz, aroused for the last time the deep-seated affection of the nation for its Sovereign, one final expression of loyalty on the eve of eternal separation. After a night of debauchery on the 3d of August, 1744, Louis was laid prostrate with a putrid fever. From the 4th to the 12th the King got rapidly worse. Madame de Châteauroux and her confidant Richelieu took possession of the royal chamber, and with the aid of Madame de Laraguais, the aides-de camp and domestics attached to the favorite's interest, closed the door against their enemies. For at not many feet from the bed where the King was lying in a desperate condition, the princes of the blood, the great officers of the Crown, all the dignitaries who yet respected the honor of the Crown and of the Church, Bouillon, La Rochefoucauld, Villeroy, Fitz-james, the Bishop of Soissons, the Jesuit Father Pérusseau, the

confessor of the King, collected together in the antechamber, scanning eagerly the countenances of the King's attendants as they passed to and fro between the folding-doors of his bedroom. All these felt a pious horror at the bare possibility of a King of France dying without confession and the last consolations of religion. For the inexorable Bishop of Soissons, the chief almoner of the King, and the Father Pérusseau, would listen to no terms of compromise; they demanded the dismissal of the concubine before confession should be accepted and the sacrament administered. Every art was used to dupe the Court and to deceive the King as to the danger of his condition; but all was vain; the terrors of the King were aroused, he fancied in his delirium that he already felt the torments of eternity. On recovering from a faint ing state he called aloud for his broth and his confessor; the Châteauroux, with a hopeless air, gave way to the ecclesiastics; in a few seconds the foldingdoors were thrown open, and the Bishop cried sternly to the two sisters: "Le roi vous ordonne, mesdames, de vous retirer de chez lui sur le champ," and the pair quitted Metz amid the imprecations of crowds who beheld in them but examples of adultery and incest, and knew not that the shortlived energy he had displayed was due to the mistress-the very object of their execrations.

Very many descriptions have been made of the prophetic frenzy into which the news of the King's illness threw the whole population of Paris. "Now," they said, "now that he was about to become a great King, he will be taken from us." France recalled like a mother her once passionate love and devotion for the bright-faced boy with the golden hair. After they had heard that the Queen had left Versailles to go to the bedside of her dying husband, "For many days," says Voltaire, "Paris took no heed of the appointed times for sleep, for waking, or for taking food." The couriers, as they arrived, were beset by crowds eager for intelligence; the churches were besieged day and night by the populace praying for the King's recovery as for the last grace of Heaven. The poor gave to the poor money to make their offerings at the altar, saying, " Priez Dieu pour le roi."

On the 15th, the King was given over by his doctors, but an empiric stept in, gave him an enormous dose of emetic, and he was saved. The public joy knew no bounds, people embraced in the streets with tears and cries of joy; not a guild of artisans but sang the "Te Deum;" and the news spread with electric speed throughout France. The title of Louis le Bien-aimé was awarded him by universal acclamation; the gratitude of the people was given him, in fact, not for having done anything, but for not dying; and the King himself, amid the triumphal reception which was prepared for him on his return, exclaimed, What have I done to be so loved?" But with returning health the passion for Madame de Châteauroux returned also; and one November night he slipt quietly out of the Tuileries and presented himself without warning at the house of his mistress in the Rue du Bac. The favorite was so confounded at this sudden apparition that at the first interview she made nothing but incoherent speeches; on the next day, however, all her haughtiness returned, and her injured pride made exorbitant demands before she would consent to return to Versailles. Nothing would satisfy her but the disgrace and exile of all who had conspired to drive her away from Metz. The Bishop of Soissons, his confessor, the Dukes de Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, all were exiled. Maurepas alone was allowed to remain at the King's earnest prayer, and at the price of the most abject humiliation. The minister was himself to bear to the injured favorite a letter of apology and her own recall. Maurepas, whom the Châteauroux ways styled the "faquine," yielded. He presented himself with his missive in the Rue du Bac, he received no salutation, and when he attempted to kiss the mistress's hand, received but the words, "Donnez . . . allez-vous en!" But the indignation and emotions of the last two months, the frenzy of triumph, had fatally agitated the violent nature of the imperious woman, an inflammatory fever raged through her whole system, and after eleven days of transports, convulsions, and delirium ; after having been bled eleven times in vain in the feet and the hand, she died on the 1st of December at the age of twenty-seven years, in

the arms of her sister and discarded rival Madame de Mailly, who forgave everything. Two days afterwards she was buried at Saint Sulpice with a guard under arms, to save her body from the insults of the populace.*

TO BE CONTINUED.

Temple Bar.

CLIQUES AND CRITICISM.

It is not very long since a bewildered correspondent addressed one of the daily newspapers, in a piteous strain of inquiry, as to how it should be that the most opposite critical verdicts imaginable were so often pronounced, over the same literary production, by the various Aristarchi of journalism. How should it happen that Brown's novel should be affirmed to be all that a novel ought to be in one quarter, and all that a novel ought not to be in another? Were there absolutely no fixed canons of criticism whatever? Was there no such thing as a definite invariable standard of art? Was the law of artistic excellence subject to the same fluctation as that of the sophistic morality? And was it, after all, the case that merit was a merely relative term, and that each newly-made, self-created critic was, in fact, the standard of all things to himself? Such were the questions propounded in despairing accents by the mazed gentleman who appealed, as a last resource, to that modern Delphic oracle, the daily press. And such, doubtless, have been the queries which many a puzzled student of the reviews innumerable of ephemeral literature has again and again propounded to himself. Is it still the old story of the Heraclitean flux-is everything in a state of decay-is there no such thing as abso

*Madame de Mailly passed the last years of her life in practices of an exemplary penitence spending all her time and money on the poor. She visited the prisons and the sick, and publicly washed the feet of the poor; she reserved for herself scarcely enough for her own necessities. She died in 1751, with hair-cloth next her person. On one occasion, as she entered the church of Saint

Paul, and some person gave way to her, a bystander said, Voila bien du train pour une fem me perdue!" She replied, "Puisque vous la connaissez, priez Dieu pour elle."

NEW SERIES-Vol. VI, No. 2.

lute permanent existence? Is the skeptical maxim of Horne Tooke really sufficient explanation of everything-"Truth is that which one troweth?" It would be futile to endeavor to solve a problem, which certainly dates from the days of Pontius Pilate, within the limits of a magazine article; nor would it be less unprofitable to attempt, within a few pages, definitely to settle what the precise function of modern criticism is or ought to be. An Utopian ideal may be agreeable enough as an abstract speculation; but Utopian ideals, unfortunately, are quite as apt to elude the rough material grasp, as the phantom of Creusa to escape from the abortive embrace of the pious Eneas. Mr. Lowe has obligingly taught us the value-though, by the by, he happens to have violated his precept at every step-of arguing and of drawing conclusions from the facts of experience, instead of starting from the ignisfatuus of à priori abstractions. Criticism, like most other human institutions, can be best discerned by the light of experience, and that is the only luminary of which use will be made here. As for ungrateful skeptics who declare that criticism never did and never can do any good-who boldly and thanklessly allege that public opinion is the only valid tribunal by which to judge of the artist's claims-no attempt need be made, here to discuss these very objectionable persons. Practically, the great value which the general reader can derive from the critical pen is an escape from the necessity of wading through a great deal of trash, without any solid beneficial results. Viewed in this light the critic is much what a wine-taster to the public at large might be. It would be the business of this fictitious functionary to cultivate a palate of exquisite nicety, to see that his patrons were not imposed upon, and generally to save them the annoyance of sipping so many vintages, as well as the possible contingency of a headache. Not less ought it to be the aim of the artistic examiner and professional connoisseur to see that the wares which he recommends to the special patronage of a public which has neither time nor inclination to do the dirty work of indiscriminate tasting for itself, are the best of their kind. South African, if we may judge from the benev

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