Robert Darnton
An Early Information Society
[Page 14]
What had happened between those two dates, 1729 and 1749? A great deal, of course: a flare-up of the Jansenist religious controversy, a running battle between the parlements and the crown, a major war, some disastrous harvests, and the imposition of unpopular taxes. But I would like to stress another factor: the end of the royal touch.
et
me tell you a story. Call it "The Three Sisters." Once upon
a time, there was a nobleman, the marquis de Nesle, who had three
daughters, one more beautiful than the other—or,
if not exactly beautiful, at least ready and eager for sexual
adventure. But that is a delicate subject, so I had better disguise
their names and set the story in Africa.
So: Once upon a time, in the African kingdom of the Kofirans, a young monarch, Zeokinizul, began to eye the ladies in his court. (If you choose to unscramble the names—Kofirans/Français, Zeokinizul/Louis Quinze—that is up to you.) The king was a timid soul, interested in nothing except sex, and he was pretty timid at that, too. But the first sister, Mme. de Liamil (Mailly) overcame his awkwardness and dragged him to bed. She had been coached by the chief minister, a mullah (prelate) named Jeflur (Fleury), who used her influence to fortify his own. But then the second sister, Mme. de Leutinemil (Vintimille), decided to play the same game; and she succeeded even better, thanks to tutoring from a still more wicked courtier, the kam de Kelirieu (duc de Richelieu). She died, however, after giving birth to a child.
So the king took up the third sister, Mme. de Lenertoula (La Tournelle, later the duchesse de Châteauroux), the most beautiful and ambitious of them all. She, too, accepted counsel from the wicked Kelirieu, and she conquered the king so completely that soon she was ruling the kingdom. Blinded by passion, Zeokinizul took her with him to the front, when he set off to repulse an invasion of the Maregins (Germans). His subjects grumbled that kings should leave their mistresses at home when they did battle. In fact, the attempt to make love as well as war proved to be more than Zeokinizul's constitution could bear. He fell ill, so deathly ill, that the doctors gave him up for lost, and the mullahs prepared to give him the last rites. But it looked as though the king might die unshriven, because Mme. de Lenertoula and Kelirieu refused to allow anyone near the royal bedside. Finally, one mullah broke into the bedroom. He warned Zeokinizul of the danger of damnation. As the price for administering confession and extreme unction, he demanded that the king renounce his mistress. Lenertoula departed under a volley of insults, the king received the sacraments, and then—miracle!—he recovered.
His people rejoiced. His enemies retreated. He returned to his palace . . . and began to think it over. The mullah had been awfully insistent about hellfire. Mme. de Lenertoula was awfully beautiful . . . So the king called her back. And then she promptly died. End of story.
What is the moral of this tale? For Parisians, it meant that the king's sins would bring down the punishment of God; and everyone would suffer, as Bernard proclaimed during the discussion of The Three Sisters, the version of the story that he declaimed in the shop of the wigmaker Gaujoux.
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