M. AUBERTIN ON THE AGE OF LOUIS XV.* [SECOND NOTICE.]
ON return from the Hague, Dubois received the reward for his services in being named a member of the Council for Foreign Affairs, and before the year was over in being appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James, there to consolidate his work and to counteract the active machinations of the resentful Alberoni. The portions of M. Aubertin's volume which treat of this embassy are amongst the most amusing, as biographically they are the most illustrative of the man Dubois. He had visited England in 1698, on some mysterious errand, when he brought a letter from Ninon de l'Enclos to St. Evremond, who had introduced him to the fashionable world, where he still retained some acquaintances, notably the Countess of Sandwich, to whom he instantly addressed himself. It was in October, 1717, that Dubois reached London, where he resided in Duke Street, Westminster ; but his confidential address for certain correspondents was "under the name of M. Duboisson, dancing master, at Mr. Hanton's, car- penter, in St. Martin's Court, behind the Church at Charing Cross." His reception was cordial and his impressions agreeable. "There is no country in the world where one sees so many pretty women." "I have been as astounded at the crowds as a countryman who gets to the Pontneuf in Paris, which Pontneuf, again, would look a desert by the side of what is here seen." "On Monday I supped with the King at Hampton Court, and next day accompanied him to the races to Guildford. My Lord Onslow, with whom the. King dined, having in a whisper proposed to me to drink your Royal Highness's health in some ninety years' old Cyprus wine sent him by his brother, the Envoy in Constantinople, the King having caught sight of this, asked for the same wine, and insisted on striking glasses with me," But Dubois, though keeping a sumptuous establishment, was in his habits very abstemious, and with his French taste for dashing wine with water he soon suffered under a course of strong English potations, and was reduced to consult Chirac, a physician then in vogue. "Work and vexation, banquets and wine have inflamed my blood. Wholly unfit for work, I do nothing but suffer with impatience. I take morning and night a cup of milk, every four-and-twenty hours [a medical application not to be mentioned], and at dinner a little broth." But these physical depressions did not for any while prevail. In the midst of diplomatic notes and reports we have an incessant flow of domestic missives addressed to a nephew left in charge of his Paris penates, full of minute instructions as to household arrange- ments and culinary provisions. The nephew was a pattern of thrift, and quite bewildered at his uncle's extravagant orders. "Sir," he writes, "we yesterday made a careful inventory of your cellars, where we found many bottles of beer and sherry broken." In her letters, the Regent's mother repeatedly mentions Dubois in terms which would seem to imply that she could have held no intercourse with him ; but if so, she certainly did not refrain from honouring his cellar with occasional requisitions. "There are very few bottles left of Tokay," writes the nephew, "and as Madame is to return in three days from St. Cloud, it is not to be expected they will last long. When these are finished, and one should come to ask for some, is one to say there is none, or shall more be bottled? And suppose this be done, is it we who are to buy the bottles and the corks ?" Incessant are Dubois' orders to have good things for his table sent over. "Send me a small basket of cheeses of Pont L'Eveque or Marolles, and two Bries cheeses. As soon as ever it is cold enough to let truffles travel with safety, write to Brives to send us some." Dubois loses his cook, and the nephew submits the names of some artists the poor simple man fancies up to the ambassadorial mark, a notion rudely dispelled by the following curt reply :—" You talk to me of the cook of the late M. d'Armenonville, but M. d'Arme- nonville never had an idea of eating ; and the Bishop of Orleans, his brother, never does eat anything but saisiffs. How should a good official possibly come out of such a school ?" But there are also other than edible articles to be provided ; as, for instance, his turn-out for an approaching royal christening. The nephew is told to get from a celebrated tailor a suit of purple velvet, with waistcoat and cuffs of a colour to match. "Mind to have some powder thrown upon the shoulders, so as to make the coat look as if not quite new, and take care to be quick about it," are the Ambassador's careful instructions to his bourgeois factotum, who • L'Esprit public as IVIlle. Biede. Par C. AubertIn. Parts. 1873.
is manifestly beside himself at a style of dress which costs, ac- cording to his calculation, no less than 105 francs 12 sous a yard. But the nephew had even more extravagant commissions to per- form occasionally. The Abbe Dubois was not merely splendid in his own person, but liked to be splendid in his attentions to others, especially to ladies of rank. "I beseeoh you," he writes to the wife of the financier Law, "to select a rich stuff on white ground f or a dress for the Duchess of Munster, who is," says the con- noisseur in the sex, "a very big and very stout woman, with black hair and eyebrows, and a very white skin. Another rich dress is required for Mademoiselle Schulenburg, her niece, who has black eyebrows and auburn hair ; besides, two other very rich stuffs for two young ladies, relatives of my Lord Stanhope. It is necessary that these last two stuffs should be brilliant, and have a foreign character." But this did not exhaust Dubois' atten- tion. He bethought himself that English ladies were but insuffici- ently instructed how to showoff their fineries from abroad, and in his anxiety to this end, he hit on the grotesque idea of getting a first- class milliner, Mademoiselle Pillion, "to make a big doll, which would show English ladies how those of France are dressed and wear their hair." Aghast, the nephew observes,—" But this doll will coat 300 livres at the very least, and neither Madame Law nor Mademoiselle Pillion will order it without express assurance of payment." Dubois has his own opinion on the advisability of this outlay, and is nowise disconcerted at the figure. The doll must be made, for the benefit of the fine ladies, and eventually does come over the water, along with the established Ambassadorial transport for matters of State and of good living. And yet it would be a mistake to assume Dubois himself to have been a gross feeder, and inordinately given to sensual enjoyments. On the contrary, he was a confirmed valetudinarian, living strictly according to rule, his physical nature being perpetually tortured by sufferings under which it is wonderful how his elasticity of spirits did not succumb.
During the whole period of his embassy, Dubois was incessantly on the stretch to defeat the assiduous efforts of Alberoni for the undoing of his pet work. The wily Italian Churchman, who was directing the forttmes of Spain with consummate energy, brought to play all the resources of his crafty power to subvert the influence of Dubois, and to draw the easy temper of the Regent back into the meshes of his policy. Dubois had not merely to push on in London measures which would consolidate the Hague Treaty by the admission of the Emperor, but be had likewise with quick eye from London to watch and thwart the consummation of the insidious devices that were being concocted in Paris for the entrapment of the Regent. Throughout this period of difficulty Dubois bore himself with commendable resoluteness. There is no symptom of his ever having wavered in his views. "It is a most delicate-point, Monseigneur," he writes to the Regent, "these new overtures,"—from Alberoni. "I have shuddered at sight of what is proposed." "The lion as long as he has the thorn in his foot, lets it be drawn out with gentleness; but once be has got back his strength, and it is only in the fable he is made to remember the good service rendered." Things grew so critical, that Dubois, despite feeble health and the horrors of the sea, rushed in winter to Paris for a few weeks to steady the faltering Regent, and with success. "My lord," he wrote to Stanhope,-" the Duke has not changed his opinion, and will not be shaken by any opposing proposals." Still it was impossible to bring about anything definite as long as- the heads of the great Departments were all at heart in the Spanish interests. Dubois insisted "on the necessity of con-
stituting the Government on a simple and bandy plan with the employment of only trusty persons whose interest would be wholly centred in absolute devotion to his Royal-Highness." When Noailles and Agueaseau were dismissed, the tidings were hailed by him "with the applause bestowed- on Hercules after the defeat of monsters." It has been believed that the discovery of the Cellemare conspiracy was entirely due to the spontaneous revelations-of one Buvet, a copyist employed to transcribe for the Spanish Embassy ; but we now learn that the first clues were given-by Dubois from London, on information gained by Stanhope from Monteleon, the ambassador in this country from Philip V. Notwithstanding.these exertions, there was again a moment when all seemed in imminent peril, and on this occasion Stanhope him- self hurried acrosfothe water to throw into the scale the weight of his personal action. This was the decisive encounter, and it ended in the complete triumph of the anti-Spanish policy. Marshal Huxelles was driven to leave the Foreign Office, and with him -went-down- the last entrenchment of the party. St. Simon gives in his-Memoirs a graphic narrative of the Marshal's proud resist- ance, and of how he was positively coerced by the Regent's orders. It is now shown that this passage is an invention of the unscrupu-
lous Duke's. Nor is this the only misstatement of which be stands convicted by the conclusive evidence of unimpeachable documents. St. Simon, who in his Memoirs heaps on Dubois every possible charge of peculation, corruption, and venality ; who holds him up to acorn with all the power of his caustic pen as the basest of Ministers, dead to every national interest, and ever devoted only to the prosecution of selfish schemes, is now proven to have him- self been forward in congratulating Dubois on the accomplishment of that very political arrangement which in his Memoirs he vituperates as the scandal of his ignoble administration. The fall of Huxelles ensured the rise of Dubois to his post. Stanhope pressed the nomi- nation on the Regent, and also, as we learn from Dubois' confi- dential friend Chavigny, his promotion to the Cardinalate. The Regent's letter to the Ambassador ended in these affectionate terms, "My dear Abbe, I await you with impatience ;" and the Abbe, as soon as he bad set his hand to the long-pending treaty, flew to Paris. But on the eve of leaving England, he character- istically bethought himself of forcing in Borne manner on his friend and ally Stanhope those good things which he had before found him making difficulties about accepting. He cannot refrain from communicating to the Regent an idea on the subject,—" Your Royal Highness has had experience of Lord Stanhope's disin- terested nature, I would, however, like to tempt him once more by some liberality (galanterie), and if your Highness would ask his acceptance of a picture of the King or of yourself set in dia- monds for the worth of 200,000 francs, I think he would be likely to take it ; but whether he declines or not, this could only have good effect." This is not the only gift he contemplates, for Dubois asks for 100,000 francs' worth of jewels for Lord Stair. Whether either of these royal donations was proffered or taken does not appear, but the mere fact of the proposal is characteristic of the time. It has been a current allegation that Dubois was a shameless jobber during his administration. M. Aubertin points out how St. Simon is the most prominent authority for this charge, which, in his opinion, cannot be substantiated. That Dubois was not a man of scruples is manifest, but the fact is nevertheless established that under circumstances rendering it particularly easy to enrich himself largely, he died leaving behind him only a million of francs. As to the opinions of the middle- classes, in contradistinction to the discontented aristocrats represented by St. Simon, on Dubois' administration, interesting evidence is afforded by some entries in the diaries of two Paris bourgeois. "This Cardinal Dubois," writes Marais,' " has done much for his master ; he has made treaties and established peace. He liked neither rogues nor flatterers." "This Cardinal," again observes Barbier, "is of a wonderful policy ; he neither drinks nor plays, and does nothing but work. Were he to die, it would be a loss, for he is very. clever, and seems to keep him- self ready to punish scoundrels of all grades." And when the Cardinal did die, he made the following entry :—" was not loved, and the populace has insulted, his funeral procession. His impiety was a matter of notoriety, and this has brought on him these maledictions ; but he never-has done much evil, and he has done good by his negotiations for the avoidance of war." In these sentences, the true expression of bourgeois estimate, we have a very fair summary of Dubois' Character as man and as statesman, —as the former not worse than his contemporaries, and as the latter better than more than one.
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