CHAPTER XXV.

THE ROYAL CHAPEL OF VERSAILLES.

WHEN Mme. de Caylus, by birth a Protestant, relates in her Recollections, how Madame de Maintenon had her carried off and taken to Versailles, she says, "I cried a great deal at first; but the next day I found the royal mass so beautiful that I no longer hesitated to become Catholic, upon condition that I should hear it every day."

The royal chapel of Versailles presented, in fact, a brilliant spectacle, particularly on the days of religious solemnities. The majesty of the cathedrals was not to be looked for there; the locality did not admit of that; in 1675, the present chapel was not yet built, and the former one was rather a vast saloon than a church. But the most curious and most dazzling object, that which scarcely allowed a stranger time to bend his attention. upon the magnificence of the decorations and the service, was the crowd assembled within these walls; the almost fabulous assemblage of all the great names, all the great fortunes, and all that was most illustrious in France. Among all these people, mingled and crowded in the king's chapel, like the bourgeois of Paris in their parish churches,-there were very few who did not also possess their chapel, their chaplain, and their chateau; few who could not have enthroned themselves somewhere, if they had chosen, like kings; few who were not or could not have been

the heroes of the solemn praises of some village Bourdaloue. But they willingly renounced all these parish church triumphs. They did not regret to exchange for some narrow and obscure lodging at the top of the palace, the vast saloons of the habitations of their fathers; and their lordly velvet in a provincial church, did not appear to them of half the value of the untapestried end of a bench in the chapel of Versailles.

Louis XIV. liked to see his chapel full. Without explaining to himself precisely why, a proud instinct made him attach so much the more value to the homage of his court, because this homage was here mingled and confounded with that rendered to God. One thing certain is, that the best part was not often given to God. These services were scarcely regarded as more than a ceremonial; and sincerely pious people did not hesitate to go afterwards somewhere else to perform their devotions again, just as one is sometimes very glad after a state dinner, to take his seat at a humbler board, where he can at least eat in peace and satisfy his appetite. The real centre of the chapel, the point whither all eyes, all thoughts were bent, was not the altar; it was the seat of the king. On sermon and communion days, the monarch's place was so near the altar, that even with their eyes fixed upon him, people could seem to be attending a little to

* And they sold them, if it was necessary. But they did still worse than sell them; they began not to understand that there could be any peculiar feeling in retaining them. See how Mme. de Sévigné ridicules (July 10, 1675) the family de Bellière, because this old and noble family is unwilling to part with its ancestral residence. "They could never agree to sell it," she says, "because it is the paternal mansion, and the shoes of the old chancellor have touched its pavement. And on account of this old dotage, here they are lodged for twenty thousand francs of rent, -for four hundred thousand was offered them for it. What a pity that Molière is dead! He would make a good farce of it." No, Madame la Marquise; Molière had too much heart to ridicule those, who doted enough still to value a little the old home of their fathers.

what was going on; when there was only a plain mass, as the king remained in his gallery, all eyes had to choose between the altar and him, and it was but in the most solemn moments, that the officiating priest could hope to draw them towards himself.* Until the king's arrival, there was moving about and conversation;t a stranger would have fancied himself in a theatre before the rising of the curtain. At the instant when the guards took possession of the doors, which fact announced that the king was going to appear, an absolute silence established itself everywhere, to the remotest corners. It was not the king for whom they waited; it was as if God himself, until then absent from the chapel, had suddenly filled it with his presence and glory. There is a story told of the malice of the Duke de Brissac, major of the guards, and the astonishment of the king one day, upon finding the chapel almost deserted. The duke had nothing to do but to withdraw the guards, and to say loud enough to be heard, that his majesty was not coming.

It is true, it would probably not have been so if Bourdaloue

*"This nation, moreover, has its king and its God. The great assemble every day in a certain temple. At the extremity of this temple, is an altar consecrated to their God, where a priest celebrates certain mysteries, which they call holy, sacred, awe-inspiring. The nobles form a vast circle around this altar, and remain standing with their backs turned to the priests and the mysteries, and their faces towards their king. It is easy to perceive a kind of worship in this usage, for the people appear to adore their prince, and the prince to adore God."-LA BRUYERE.

"The Abbé de Valbelle informed me, that after mass, his majesty smilingly presented his almoners with a printed document, which an unknown person had circulated at Saint-Germain, and in which the nobility supplicate the king to reform the manners of his clergy,-who converse and talk aloud, and turn their backs to the altar, before his majesty's arrival in the chapel,-and to command them to behave with at least the same reverence when only God is in the chapel, as when the king is there. This petition is very well drawn up. The bishops are furious at it.— MME DE SEVIGNE. 19 Jan. 1674.

had been expected to preach that day. The crowd may then be imagined, when this attraction was added to that of seeing the king, and above all, of being seen by him. Upon these occasions the ushers were obliged to forbid the entrance of the chapel to a crowd of people who usually had a right to enter; the highest nobility alone were admitted, and there was not even enough room for them. They took a great pleasure and a great pride in hearing at Versailles many a sermon which they had perhaps already heard at Paris. They exhausted themselves in guesses as to what the preacher was going to add, change or omit; and finally discovered a crowd of details which had at first appeared insignificant, to be of the greatest importance. Then they did not always agree as to these details; some remembered them less distinctly than others; some had heard them one way, some another; and this caused a thousand discussions, a thousand little disputes, the settlement of which was necessarily adjourned until the moment when the orator in repeating his discourse, should prove one right and the other wrong, and often both wrong. It was still worse when the discourse was finished. Few works in our day make as much noise on their first appearance, as many a discourse of Bourdaloue was able to cause in a certain circle; and if sermons have retained, particularly in Protestant countries, the privilege of being the most fruitful subjects of conversation for many persons, we cannot be astonished that it was so at a period when politics, newspapers, and all their accompaniments, occupied scarcely any place in the lives of individuals and nations. That these conversations were, or are irreproachable in regard to intention and manner, that their sole end is always to profit as much as possible by the sermon, which is their subject, is very dubious; but, however, it is always at least an index of a certain religious vitality, a certain interest for religion.

On the day when all that we have already related had taken

place, the chapel had never been more crowded, or to speak more correctly, never had such a number of persons found an entrance impossible. The ladies having filled all the places, generally eserved for the men, the latter were crowded in the doorways, the gratings, the outside galleries, everywhere as far as it could be hoped the voice of the preacher could be heard. In every corner there was a dazzling confusion of feathers, embroideries, and swords, for the men came to chapel in all the splendor of their usual costumes. The women were forced by custom to simplify theirs, but they strove to find materials and fashions from which simplicity did not exclude magnificence, and many a dress for church, quite plain in appearance, had often cost much dearer than a ball-dress. For that matter, it is a pious fraud of which the tradition does not appear to have been lost.

On this day, then, great was the commotion. A Good-Friday to be celebrated, a sermon to be heard from Bourdaloue, the whisperings of the evening before, the grand news of the night, for it had not been an hour before everybody knew that the marquise had fled, this was amply sufficient to pique curiosity, and to deprive all other subjects of conversation of all interest. And yet subjects were not wanting. It was in the very hottest period of the intrigues relative to the distribution of ranks in the army which was about to unite, (for the last time, alas!) under the command of Turenne; and this latter, in concert with the Prince de Condé, had put himself openly at the head of a sort of plot to overthrow Louvois. There had been nothing talked of since the beginning of the week, but certain apologies to which the king was said to have forced the proud minister to abase himself, before the marshal.-But this was a very small thing compared with the news of the day.

Add to this, that the king had not been seen all the morning, His levee had only lasted a few minutes. The courtiers had