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Kinnary Jangla

Accelerating Development Velocity

Using Docker
Docker Across Microservices
Kinnary Jangla
San Francisco, CA, USA

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in

this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s product page,
located at www.​apress.​com/​9781484239353 . For more detailed information,
please visit www.​apress.​com/​source-code .

ISBN 978-1-4842-3935-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-3936-0

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3936-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962734

© Kinnary Jangla 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or
by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than
use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo,
or image, we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion
and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of
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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and
accurate at the date of publication, neither the author nor the editors nor the
publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that
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Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media
New York, 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-
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To all those engineers who struggle with ramp-up curves on new software
tools!
Introduction
The idea of writing this book occurred to me while I was ramping up on
Docker during my first year at Pinterest. There is a lot of content on the
Internet, but it is unstructured and sometimes incorrect and inaccurate. This
book will help you to understand the fundamentals of Docker. To understand
anything in depth, it’s best to start with basic concepts. Over the past years,
the needs of tech companies have evolved significantly. This book will help you
understand the need for Docker in the software industry and how Docker has
managed to ease the growing pains of this industry.
I have tried to structure this book by explaining the fundamentals before
going into anything specific to Docker. I hope that helps you understand the
fundamentals of Docker.
My hope, too, is that this book is useful to both students and engineers
who want to ramp up on Docker quickly.
The following sections provide a snapshot of the book.
Chapter 1 : Containers
This chapter focuses on what Docker is all about. It’s about containers. But
what are containers and how do they differ from virtual machines? Why does
Docker make use of container technology and what are the benefits of that?
What are the advantages and challenges of containerization? At the end of this
chapter, you will have learned the underlying technology of Docker.
Chapter 2 : Docker
This chapter focuses on how the software industry evolved and what gave rise
to the need for containers and, therefore, Docker. In this chapter, you’ll learn
the history of Docker, in addition to some of its basic use cases today.
Chapter 3 : Monolith vs. Microservices
Because this book focuses on debugging microservices using Docker, this
chapter talks about the evolution of microservices, the differences between
monolith and microservices, and the advantages and challenges of both. It will
help you understand why debugging becomes significantly difficult when
you’re dealing with multiple services that all need to talk to one another.
Chapter 4 : Docker Basics
This chapter is all about taking the first few steps to begin working with
Docker. This section discusses the terminology used in the Docker world, the
underlying architecture of Docker, how to install Docker, and some basic
Docker commands. This chapter is your go-to to step foot into Docker land.
Chapter 5 : Docker Images
This chapter goes deep into what Docker images are and how they’re created.
It examines Dockerfiles, which is where all the instructions to build Docker
images are located. Then it goes into how to build Docker images and, finally,
into Docker containers in depth. I would encourage you to take some extra
time to understand the role of Dockerfiles, Docker images, and Docker
containers. I’d also advise acquiring a thorough understanding of this chapter.
Chapter 6 : Docker Compose
This chapter is devoted to the Docker Compose tool. This links all the services
and helps in running an application from end to end. Here you’ll learn all
aspects of Docker Compose: how to install it, how to use it, and what happens
behind the scenes.
Chapter 7 : Debugging Microservices Using Docker
This is what the book has been leading to. This chapter is the core and longest
chapter of this book. It explains what distributed environments are and their
challenges. It later goes into depth about how to debug an end-to-end real-
world use case, by explaining different related debugging techniques.
Chapter 8 : Advanced Docker Use Cases
After exploring how to debug an application, based on the microservices
architecture, this chapter discusses some advanced use cases of Docker. It
talks about the use of Docker in a production environment, orchestration using
Docker, and offers some tips and tricks to help you with the software.
Acknowledgments
Writing a book requires teamwork. I’m lucky to have found a team of thorough
tech reviewers such as Michael Erwin and James Markham, who revised my
content thoroughly to ensure that this book is completely most up to date.
Thanks, Apress, for the opportunity, and Nancy Chen, for all the hard work of
coordination and keeping me on schedule.
This book took a long time to complete. In the past few months, I wanted
to give up multiple times. It was my husband’s push and support that
ultimately got me to the finish line. I can never thank you enough, Abhinav
Vora.
Thank you to all my family and friends for being so patient and
understanding of the lack of time and attention I was able to devote to you
these past months. Your support and motivation kept me going.
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The court of
Louis XV
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
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eBook.

Title: The court of Louis XV

Author: Imbert de Saint-Amand

Translator: Elizabeth Gilbert Martin

Release date: March 18, 2024 [eBook #73192]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Karin Spence and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COURT

OF LOUIS XV ***
 FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT.
From the French of Imbert de Saint-Amand.
Each with Portrait, 12mo, $1.25.
THREE VOLUMES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE END OF THE OLD RÉGIME.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AT THE TUILERIES.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY.

THREE VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

CITIZENESS BONAPARTE.
THE WIFE OF THE FIRST CONSUL.
THE COURT OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

FOUR VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE.

THE HAPPY DAYS OF MARIE LOUISE.
MARIE LOUISE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE.
MARIE LOUISE AND THE INVASION OF 1814.
MARIE LOUISE, THE RETURN FROM ELBA, AND THE HUNDRED DAYS.

TWO VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME.

THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME.
THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME AND THE TWO RESTORATIONS.

THREE VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF BERRY.

THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF LOUIS XVIII.
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X.
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE REVOLUTION OF JULY, 1830.

Four New Volumes.

WOMEN OF THE VALOIS AND VERSAILLES COURTS.
WOMEN OF THE VALOIS COURT.
WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.
WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. Vol. I.
WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. Vol. II.
MARIE LECZINSKA.
 WOMEN OF VERSAILLES

THE

COURT OF LOUIS XV.

BY

IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND

TRANSLATED BY

ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN

WITH PORTRAITS

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1893

COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

 CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction 1

FIRST PART
[1715–1744]
CHAPTER
I. The Infanta Marie Anne Victoire, Betrothed of Louis XV 13
II. The Marriage of Marie Leczinska 23
III. The Disgrace of the Marquise de Prie 31
IV. The King Faithful to the Queen 39
V. The Favor of the Countess de Mailly 46
VI. The Countess de Vintimille 53
VII. The Disgrace of the Countess de Mailly 59
VIII. The Reign of the Duchess de Châteauroux 68
IX. The Journey to Metz 75
X. The Death of the Duchess de Châteauroux 84

SECOND PART
[1745–1768]
I. Louis XV. and the Royal Family in 1745 97
II. The Beginnings of the Marquise de Pompadour 116
III. The New Marquise 125
IV. Madame de Pompadour’s Theatre 133
V. The Grandeurs of the Marquise de Pompadour 147
VI. The Griefs of the Marquise de Pompadour 156
VII. Madame de Pompadour, Lady of the Queen’s Palace 168
VIII. Madame de Pompadour and the Attempt of Damiens 180
IX. Madame de Pompadour and Domestic Politics 193
X. Madame de Pompadour and the Seven Years’ War 201
XI. Madame de Pompadour and the Philosophers 214
XII. The Death of the Marquise de Pompadour 225
XIII. The Old Age of Marie Leczinska 233
XIV. Marie Leczinska and her Daughters 245
XV. The Dauphiness Marie Josèphe of Saxony 258
XVI. The Death of Marie Leczinska 269
THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.
 INTRODUCTION

I
f you want romance, said M. Guizot one day, why not turn to
history? The great author was right. The historical novel is out of
fashion at present. People are tired of seeing celebrated people
misrepresented, and they agree with Boileau that
“Nothing is so beautiful as the true, the true alone is lovely.”
Are there, in fact, any inventions more striking than reality? Can
any novelist, however ingenious, find more varied combinations or
more interesting scenes than the dramas of history? Could the most
fertile mind imagine any types so curious as, for example, the
women of the court of Louis XV.? The eternal womanly, as Goethe
said, is all there with its vices and virtues, its pettiness and its
grandeur, its weakness and its strength, its egotism and its devotion.
What an instructive gallery! What diverse figures, from such a saint
as Madame Louise of France, the Carmelite, to Madame Dubarry,
the courtesan! In the Countess de Mailly, we have the modest
favorite; in the Duchess de Châteauroux, the haughty favorite; in the
Marquise de Pompadour, the intriguer, the female minister, the
statesman; in Queen Marie Leczinska, the model of conjugal duty
and fidelity; in the Dauphiness Marie Antoinette, the resplendent
image of grace and youth, of poesy and purity; in the six daughters
of the King, Madame the Infanta, so tender toward her father;
Madame Henriette, her twin sister, who died of chagrin at twenty-four
because she could not marry according to her inclination; Madame
Adelaide and Madame Victoire, inseparable in adversity as well as in
happier days; Madame Sophie, gentle and timid; Madame Louise,
Amazon and Carmelite by turns, who cried in the delirium of her last
agony: “To Paradise, quick, quick, to Paradise at full gallop!”
History is the resurrection of the dead, but this resurrection is not
an easy matter. To withdraw one’s self from the present in order to
live in the past, to display characters, to make audible the words of
all these personages who are sleeping their last sleep, to rekindle so
many extinct flames, evoke so many vanished shades, is a work that
would need the wand of a magician. History interests and
impassions only when it penetrates the secret of souls. To make it a
painting, in animated tones and warm colors, and not an insignificant
monochrome, it is necessary that men and things should reappear
as in a mirror that reflects the past.
The preservation of the palace where they passed their existence
facilitates the renascence of the women of the court of Louis XV. It is
something to be able to say: Here such an event was accomplished,
such a remark uttered. Here such a personage rendered her last
sigh. The sight of the rooms where so many dramas were unfolded
is in itself a fruitful lesson. The theatre remains; the decorations are
hardly changed. But this is not all. The dust must be shaken from the
costumes; the actors and actresses must be hunted up; the play
must begin anew.
There is no lack of materials for this work of reconstruction; they
are even rather too abundant: memoirs by Duclos, Marais, Barbier,
the Duke de Luynes, Maurepas, Villars, the Marquis d’Argenson,
President Hénault, Madame du Hausset, Count de Ségur, Weber,
Madame Campan;—histories by Voltaire, M. Henri Martin, Michelet,
Jobez;—works by the brothers Goncourt, Sainte-Beuve, M. de
Lescure, the Countess d’Armaillé, Boutaric, Honoré Bonhomme,
Campardon, Capefigue, Le Roi, Barthélemy;—collections by M.
Feuillet de Conches and M. d’Arneth;—the secret correspondence of
Louis XV. with his secret diplomatic corps, that of Count Mercy-
Argenteau with the Empress Maria Theresa, new editions of ancient
books, autographs, recent publications—one is embarrassed by
such a mass of riches. Not days, but months and years, are needed
to become well acquainted with all these treasures. But life is so
short and so preoccupied with affairs that the public, with few
exceptions, has neither time nor inclination to study so many
volumes. Is it not a critic’s business to spare his readers minute
researches, to guide them through the labyrinth, to condense long
works, to bring out saliently the most characteristic passages; in a
word, to facilitate study and popularize history while scrupulously
respecting truth? This is what we shall try to do for Louis XV. and the
women of his court.
 This much-decried monarch is one of those wavering,
inconsequent, bizarre types of whom so many are found in our world
of contradictions and miseries. Alas! who has not something of Louis
XV. in his own soul? To see the good and do the evil; to believe and
not to practise; to vainly seek a remedy for ennui in sensual
pleasure; to act against conscience and know self-condemnation,
but not amendment; to be dissatisfied with one’s actions and lack
strength for true repentance,—is not this the common lot? How many
honest citizens are mere repetitions of Louis XV., lacking his crown!
They show respect for their wives and affection for their children.
They blame free thinkers severely. They speak respectfully of
religion. And at the same time they do not observe the maxims of
morality which they preach; they keep mistresses, they are guilty of
shameful debaucheries. Their life is a series of incongruities; they
know neither what they are nor what they desire. Such was Louis
XV. His religion was not hypocrisy. His attempts at conversion came
to nothing, but they issued from the depths of his troubled
conscience. He remained in the mire, but he dreamed of the light.
Let us not be pitiless then. Is it graceful in demagogues to display
such severity toward kings? Is there more morality under the red
liberty caps than above the red-heeled slippers? Louis XV. was not a
faithful husband, but he had a great veneration for his wife and a
profound affection for his children. In spite of unpardonable scandals
he was not so odious a character as he has been painted.
Weakness is the word that best characterizes him, not malignity.
Take his favorites from the sovereign, and he might be not simply
a worthy man, but a great king. He is intelligent and kindly. His
people adore him. Fortune has crowned him. Voltaire goes into
ecstasies over the glories of this reign, which the advocate Barbier
declares to be the finest epoch in the entire history of France. What
compromises, what ruins all this? The great enemy, voluptuousness.
Oh! how swift, how slippery, is the descent into vice! How one
fault entails another! During several years (1725–1733) Louis XV. is
a model husband. Then he mysteriously commits a first infidelity;
afterwards he stops at nothing. He is timid at first; he hides himself,
but by degrees he becomes bolder. He declares himself at first with
the Countess de Mailly; afterwards with her sister, the Countess de
Vintimille; however, he still maintains some restraint. Louis XV. is
stingy with the State funds; his old preceptor, Cardinal Fleury, retains
some influence over him. But Fleury dies (1743); the King has a
mentor no longer; he emancipates himself; the scandal gains
strength and is triumphant in the person of a third sister, the Duchess
of Châteauroux. Heaven, nevertheless, sends the monarch some
severe lessons; Madame de Vintimille had died in childbirth (1741);
the King himself came near dying at Metz; the Duchess of
Châteauroux dies of chagrin and other emotions at the close of
1744. People think Louis XV. is about to change his ways. ’Tis an
error: here comes the minister in petticoats, the Marquise de
Pompadour, a queen of the left hand. She, to use Voltaire’s
expression, is a sort of grisette made for the opera or the seraglio,
who tries to amuse this bored monarch by diversions still more
preposterous than his dulness. She dies at the task, and Louis XV.
has not even a tear for her. As Rochefoucauld has said: “If a man
thinks he loves his mistress for love of her, he is much mistaken.”
Louis XV. is growing old. The Queen dies in 1768. He regrets her,
and people fancy that at last he is going to follow the wise advice of
his surgeon, and not merely rein his horses up, but take them out of
the traces. They are reckoning without the woman who is about to
bring the slang of Billingsgate to Versailles. After great ladies the
great citizeness; after her the woman of the people; the De Nesle
sisters are followed by Madame de Pompadour; Madame de
Pompadour by Dubarry; Dubarry, the “portiere of the Revolution.”
One thing strikes me in this series of royal mistresses; I see
debauchery everywhere, but nowhere love. Love with its
refinements, its disinterestedness, its spirit of sacrifice, its mysticism,
its poetry—where is it? I perceive not even the least shadow of it.
Ah! how right was Rochefoucauld in saying: “It is the same thing with
true love as with the apparition of ghosts; everybody talks about, but
very few have seen it.” Voluptuousness, on the other hand, is
shameless in its cynicism, and when I contemplate this wretched
King whom it degrades and corrupts and weakens, who is wearied
and complains and is sad unto death, I recall a page from one of the
most eloquent of men: “The intoxication once past, there remains in
the soul a doleful astonishment, a bitterly experienced void. It may
be filled by new agitations; but it is reproduced again vaster than
before, and this painful alternation between extreme joys and
profound depression, between flashes of happiness and the
impossibility of being happy, begets at last a state of continual
sadness.... Say no longer to the man attacked by it: See what a fine
day! Say no more: Listen to this sweet music! Do not even say: I love
you! Light, harmony, love, all that is good and charming can do no
more than irritate his secret wound. He is doomed to the Manes, and
everything appears to him as if he were in a sepulchre, stifling for
want of air and crushed by the weight of marble.... There comes a
moment when all the man’s satiated powers give him an invincible
certainty of the nothingness of the universe. Once a fleeting smile
was all the despairing man needed to open limitless perspectives
before him; now the adoration of the world would not affect him. He
estimates it at its true value: nothing.”[1]
Is not the profound sadness of Louis XV. a moral lesson as
striking as any instruction from the preachers? Here is a sovereign
privileged by destiny, handsome, powerful, victorious, surrounded by
general admiration, possessor of the first throne of the universe,
loved almost to idolatry by his people, having a tender and devoted
wife, good and respectful children, soldiers who long to die bravely in
his service to the cry of, “Long live the King!” He dwells in splendid
palaces; when he pleases, he shakes off the yoke of etiquette and
lives like a private gentleman in little residences which are
masterpieces of grace and good taste; every one seeks to divine his
wishes, his caprices; all the arts are pressed into the service of
making life agreeable to him; all pleasures, all elegancies, conspire
to charm and entertain him. His health is robust; boon-companion,
bold horseman, indefatigable huntsman and lover, he enjoys every
pleasure at his will. Well, he is plunged into the depths of ill-humor,
the most dismal melancholy, and the sentiment he inspires in those
who observe him closely—as every memoir of the time attests—is
not envy, but pity.
What conclusion can one draw from this except that neither the
dazzle of riches, the prestige of pride, the fumes of incense, the
caresses of flattery, the false joys of sensual pleasure, nor the
intoxications of power can make man happy! He thirsts in the middle
of the fountain; he finds thorns in the crown of roses that encircles
his forehead, and a gnawing worm creeps, like Cleopatra’s asp, into
the odorous flowers whose perfume he inhales. The lamps of the
festival grow dim, the boudoirs look like tombs, and suddenly the
Manes, Tekel, Phares, appears in flaming letters on the portals of
gold and marble. O King, expect neither truce to thy woes nor
distraction from thine ennui, that implacable companion of thy
grandeur! Thou art thine own enemy, and all will betray thee,
because thou art not reconciled with thyself. Most Christian King,
son of Saint Louis, thou dost suffer, and oughtest to suffer, for thou
canst neither seat thyself tranquilly upon the throne nor kneel before
the altar!
The end of this existence was dismal. Count de Ségur relates that
as Louis XV. was going to the chase he met a funeral and
approached the coffin. As he liked to ask questions, he inquired who
was to be buried. They told him it was a young girl who had died of
small-pox. Seized with sudden terror, he returned to his palace of
Versailles and was almost instantly attacked by the cruel malady
whose very name had turned him pale. Gangrene invaded the body
of the voluptuous monarch. People fled from him with terror as if he
were plague-stricken. His daughters alone, his daughters, models of
courage and devotion, braved the contagion and would not leave his
death-bed.
Study history seriously. You fancy you will encounter scandal, but
you will find edification. Corrupt epochs are perhaps more fruitful in
great lessons than austere ones. It is not virtue, but vice, which cries
to us: Vanity, all is vanity. It is the guilty women, the royal mistresses,
who issue from their tombs and, striking their breasts, accuse
themselves in presence of posterity. These beauties who appear for
an instant on the scene and then vanish like shadows, these
unhappy favorites who wither in a day like the grass of the field,
these wretched victims of caprice and voluptuousness, all speak to
us like the sinful woman of the Gospel, and history is thus morality in
action.
FIRST PART
[1715–1744]
 I
THE INFANTA MARIE ANNE VICTOIRE, BETROTHED OF LOUIS XV.

W
hen Louis XIV. gave up the ghost, Versailles also seemed to
die. No one ventured to dwell in the palace of the Sun King.
During seven years it was abandoned. September 9, 1715, at
the very moment when Louis XV., then five and a half years old, was
returning to Vincennes, the body of him who had been Louis XIV.
was carried to its last abode, at Saint-Denis. The people danced,
sang, drank, and gave themselves up to a scandalous joy. The
following epigram got into circulation:—
“Non, Louis n’était pas si dur qu’il le parut,
Et son trépas le justifie,
Puisque, aussi bien que le Messie,
Il est mort pour notre salut.”[2]

Such is the gratitude of peoples! This is what remains of so many

flatteries, so much incense! Sic transit gloria mundi.
France, which insulted the memory of the heroic old man, was on
its knees before a child. September 12, an enormous crowd was
surging around the palace of the Parliament in Paris. Little Louis XV.
alighted from his carriage amidst acclamations, and formally entered
the palace. He took off his hat, and then, replacing it on his head,
said graciously: “Gentlemen, I have come here to assure you of my
affection. Monsieur the Chancellor will acquaint you with my will.”
And the first president responded: “We are all eager to contemplate
you upon your bed of justice like the image of God on earth.”
“Princes are badly brought up,” says the Marquis d’Argenson.
“Nothing flatters and nothing corrects them.” Ought not one to be
indulgent toward a prince to whom his governor, Marshal Villeray,
kept repeating on the balcony of the Tuileries: “Look, master, look at
these people; well! they are all yours, they all belong to you.” The
regent said to the little monarch: “I am here only to render you my
accounts, to offer matters for your consideration, to receive and
execute your orders.” The child thought himself a man already.
 In 1721 they affianced him to the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire,
daughter of Philip V., King of Spain. Louis XV. was not yet eleven
years old; the Infanta was only three. They had all the difficulty in the
world to induce the monarch to say the necessary yes. His little
betrothed arrived in Paris the following year (March 22, 1722). Louis
XV. went to meet her at Montrouge. All along the route the houses
were decked with hangings and adorned with flowers and foliage.
The next day the gazettes informed the public that the Queen—so
they called the Infanta—had received from the King a doll worth
twenty thousand livres. Three months later (June, 1722), Louis XV.
and his betrothed established themselves at Versailles, which again
became the political capital of France. The King took possession of
the bedchamber of Louis XIV.,[3] which he used until 1738. The
Infanta was lodged in the apartment of the Queen, and slept in the
chamber[4] that had been occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian
dauphiness, and the Duchess of Burgundy. She made the two
youngest daughters of the regent her inseparable companions,
treating them as if they were younger than herself, although they
were twice her age. She kept them in leading-strings under pretext of
preventing them from falling, and as she embraced them on their
departure, she would say: “Little princesses, go home now and come
to see me every day.”
Louis XV. was crowned at Rheims, October 25, 1722. “People
remember,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “how much he resembled
Love that morning, with his long coat and silver cap, in the costume
of a neophyte or candidate for kingship. I have never seen anything
so affecting as his figure at that time. All eyes grew moist with
tenderness for this poor little prince, sole scion of a numerous family,
all other members of which had perished, not without a suspicion of
having been poisoned.” France idolized this little King whose beauty,
of a supreme distinction, had somewhat ideal in it; the Emperor of
Germany said he was the child of Europe. Having completed his
thirteenth year, he was, as usual, proclaimed of age (February,
1723), and that same year, the Duke of Orleans, who had most
loyally fulfilled his duties toward his pupil, assumed the functions of
prime minister on the death of Cardinal Dubois. He showed profound
deference toward the young sovereign, and carried his portfolio to
him at five o’clock every afternoon. The King enjoyed this
occupation, and always looked forward impatiently to the hour.
When the Duke of Orleans died suddenly at Versailles (December
2, 1723), Louis XV. regretted him sincerely. It was a woman who
reigned under cover of the new prime minister, the Duke of Bourbon.
She was one of those ambitious creatures to whom the moral sense
is lacking, but who possess wit, grace, and charm; one of those
enchantresses who, by dint of intrigues, end by falling into their own
snares and cruelly expiate their short-lived triumphs. The Marquise
de Prie, the all-powerful mistress of the Duke, was twenty-five years
old. The daughter of the rich financier Berthelot de Pléneuf, she had
married a nobleman whom she managed to have appointed
ambassador to Turin. She led a very fast life in that city, and got
herself into debt. Her father being unable to maintain her any longer,
she was obliged to escape from the courts of justice, and the
Marquis de Prie was recalled from his embassy. The young
Marquise was not the woman to be discouraged by such reverses.
She had only to show herself in order to subjugate the Duke of
Bourbon, and assume a princely luxury. “She had a charming face,”
says the Marquis d’Argenson, “a sharp and crafty wit, a touch of
genius, ambition, and recklessness.... The Duke was madly in love
with her. I knew their habits, their visits to the opera ball, their little
house in the rue Sainte Apolline, their gray-looking hack, which had
the appearance of a public conveyance on the outside, but was
extremely magnificent within.... She played the queen just as I would
make a valet-de-chambre of my lackey.”
When they were carrying the reliquary of Sainte Geneviève in
procession in 1725, because the rains had spoilt the crops, she said:
“The people are crazy; don’t they know that it is I who make rain and
fine weather?”
Violent under an air of gentleness, insatiable for money and power
beneath an exterior of careless disinterestedness, a libertine through
habit rather than from passion, running after pleasure without
seeking love, betraying with impunity her lover who believed what
she said against the evidence of his own eyes, Madame de Prie