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Updated: May 22, 2025
It was requisite, in fact, that an impenetrable veil should be cast over the frailties of the king; and that the public should know nothing of what occurred at the <Parc-aux-Cerfs>. The general term <eleves> was applied to the young persons who were kept there. They were of all ages from nine to eighteen years. Until fifteen they were kept in total ignorance of the city which they inhabited.
Among the distinguished personages of Jamaica, I ought not to omit mention of the Duke of Manchester, governor soon after the beginning of this century, who was able to boast that no virtuous woman had crossed the threshold of the King's House in Spanishtown during his administration. So that if Jamaica has never had her parc-aux-cerfs, she can at least boast her Regent Orleans.
As yet I only had an equivocal existence, having rank neither at play, theatre, or public festival; so that if the king should be capricious I could be dismissed as one of the demoiselles of the <Parc-aux-Cerfs>. The duc d'Aiguillon, whose attachment to me increased, calculated accurately all the advantages of this presentation.
The King was connected only with women of so low a class that they could not be made use of for any delicate intrigue; moreover, the Parc-aux-Cerfs was a seraglio, the beauties of which were often replaced; it was desirable to give the King a mistress who could form a circle, and in whose drawing-room the long-standing attachment of the King for the Duc de Choiseul might be overcome.
If a king possessed the lamp of Aladdin, if he governed by the help of a genius who carried away the daughters and wives of his subjects through the air to the royal Parc-aux-cerfs, and turned into stone every man who wagged a finger against his majesty's government, there would indeed be an unmixed despotism. But, fortunately, a ruler can be gratified only by means of his subjects.
The King was connected only with women of so low a class that they could not be made use of for any delicate intrigue; moreover, the Parc-aux-Cerfs was a seraglio, the beauties of which were often replaced; it was desirable to give the King a mistress who could form a circle, and in whose drawing-room the long-standing attachment of the King for the Duc de Choiseul might be overcome.
He would have had all matters pass at court during the old age of Louis XV as at the period of the childhood of Louis XIV, and would fain have had the administration of the <Parc-aux-Cerfs>, that he might have arranged all with due ceremonies. Since this word <Parc-aux-Cerfs> has escaped my pen, I will tell you something of it.
You will establish a gaming table at the Parc-aux-Cerfs, and never quit it again." Comte Jean began to laugh, and then seriously advised me to follow the plain counsel of the duc de Richelieu. I decided on doing so. I sent for Madame. She came with all the dignity of an abbess of a regally founded convent.
She was characterised as superintendent of the Parc-aux-cerfs, which was said to cost hundreds of thousands of louis a year. Madame de Pompadour did, indeed, try to conceal some of the King's weaknesses, but she never knew one of the sultanas of that seraglio. There were, however, scarcely ever more than two at once, and often only one.
There is small need of any special parc-aux-cerfs in a slaveholding country. In brief, except a certain interest attached to the struggles of the barbarous Maroons to maintain their wild freedom in the woods and mountains, the human history of Jamaica, from the English conquest in 1655 to the abolition of slavery in 1834, is little more than a monotonous blank.
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