Note 23 — Chapter V · (continued 2)
Reading edition
[Madame du Cayla had been the soi-disant mistress of Louis XVIII., or rather the favourite of his declining years. ‘Il fallait une Esther,’ to use her own expression, ‘à cet Assuérus.’ She was the daughter of M. Talon, brought up by Madam Campan, and an early friend of Hortense Beauharnais. Her marriage to an officer in the Prince de Condé’s army was an unhappy one; and she was left, deserted by her husband, in straitened circumstances. After the assassination of the Duc de Berry, M. de la Rochefoucauld, one of the leaders of the ultra-Royalist party, contrived to throw her in the way of Louis XVIII., in the hope of counteracting the more Liberal influence which M. de Cazes had acquired over the King. Madame du Cayla became the hope and the mainstay of the altar and the throne. The scheme succeeded. The King was touched by her grace and beauty, and she became indispensable to his happiness. His happiness was said to consist in inhaling a pinch of snuff from her shoulders, which were remarkably broad and fair. M. de Lamartine has related the romance of her life in the thirty-eighth book of his ‘Histoire de la Restauration,’ and Béranger satirised her in the bitterest of his songs—that which bears the name of ‘Octavie’:—
Sur les coussins où la douleur l’enchaîne Quel mal, dis-tu, vous fait ce roi des rois? Vois-le d’un masque enjoliver sa haine Pour étouffer notre gloire et nos lois. Vois ce coeur faux, que cherchent tes caresses, De tous les siens n’aimer que ses aïeux; Charger de fer les muses vengeresses, Et par ses moeurs nous révéler ses dieux. Peins-nous ces feux, qu’en secret tu redoutes, Quand sur ton sein il cuve son nectar, Ces feux dont s’indignaient les voûtes Où plane encor l’aigle du grand César.
It is curious that in 1829 the last mistress of a King of France should have visited London under the reign of the last mistress of a King of England.]