Athenais (26 page)

If Athénaïs had been put off gambling by the extravagancies of M. de Montespan, she gave no sign of it. Indeed, she was one of the most famous, brilliant and reckless players at court. One Christmas night she lost 700,000 ecus at a sitting and then staked 150,000 pistoles on three cards and won her money back. On another occasion, she lost 400,000 ecus at the beginning of the evening, and stayed up until eight in the morning to make good her losses. She insisted on continuing until she had won another 100,000 to settle the debts of some fellow players who had lost all their resources. Athénaïs was not, of course, always so lucky, but Louis always paid her immense debts, along with those of the Queen, without a murmur, although he personally rather disapproved of high play. Sometimes she would run out of stakes, and a messenger would be sent to find the King so that she could carry on. Her losses, and hence those to the treasury, became notorious.

Why was such a ruinously expensive activity so popular? Not to gamble at all was seen as something of a faux pas, and the King’s halfhearted rulings against it (army officers, for example, were forbidden to play in 1691) were largely ignored. One obvious attraction may have been the welcome opportunity to sit down. Along with privileges such as dining with the King, or the right to travel in his coach, seating was an important indication of status — though not necessarily of power, given Louis’s preference for selecting his ministers from the
noblesse de robe
— and the average courtier could expect to spend most of the day on his feet. Grades of seating progressed from no seat at all through a stool, a chair with a back and an armchair, to a sofa — and which could be taken in front of whom was subject to endless, complicated permutations. A mere gentleman of quality, for example, had the right to a stool only before the princes and princesses of the blood, whereas a cardinal could sit on a sofa before the princes of the blood but only on a stool before the Queen. The King’s own children were restricted to a stool in his presence, whereas a duchess was allowed a chair before a grandchild of France.

The court was hypersensitive to such minute distinctions of rank, which were designed to separate as far as possible the pride of blood from the gratification of power, and for the old aristocracy, many of whom were deprived of any meaningful function in government, blood was all. So privilege, in all its minute degrees, was guarded jealously and there were many disputes of the kind described here by the Princess Palatine.

The Duc de Lorraine aimed to have an armchair before Monsieur and myself, because the Emperor had accorded him one. The King replied that the Emperor had his own etiquette, and he his own, inasmuch as the Emperor granted an armchair to cardinals, although they were not allowed a seat before the King . . . Monsieur wanted to grant a chair with a back, and the King agreed to it, but the Duc wanted to be treated like an elector, and this the King would not admit. Monsieur proposed to do as the King of England did. He does not wish to give us a chair, for our part we claim one, this is why he only sits on a stool when we are there . . . But the King did not wish to hear this spoken of, and so as not to make an incident out of affronting the Duc, we were obliged to renounce our visit to Bar.

It was not only in the matter of seating that the courtiers had to be aware of tiny gradations of precedence. The later court at Versailles has been compared by one historian to an English public school, having “the same complex unwritten law, the same struggle for trivial distinctions, an intricate and illogical code of privilege, with public shame and biting rebuke for the man who transgressed against its provisions.”
⁷
No one who was anyone knocked on doors at Versailles. The form was to scratch with the little fingernail of the left hand, which was kept long specifically for the purpose. The familiar
tu
address was never to be used in the King’s presence. If a message was brought by the servant of a social superior, it was to be received standing and bareheaded. If you passed the service for the King’s dinner proceeding to the table, you had to make a formal bow to “the King’s meat,” and on and on. Etiquette inevitably became a time bomb, guaranteed to explode periodically at weddings, funerals, births and even entertainments.

Amid such a plethora of shibboleths, it was much better to give up a journey than to cause a diplomatic incident over a chair. Athénaïs was herself furious for years because her husband’s refusal to be made a Duc denied her the right to a duchesse’s
tabouret,
or stool, which had been granted to Louise de La Vallière. Consequently she had to remain standing for much of the time, even though she was the most important woman at court. No wonder everyone was grateful for the relative equality of the gaming table.

It is possible to posit another explanation for the popularity of gambling at Versailles. “There is no harder work,” wrote Louis XIV to his son, “than idleness.” As power was centralized in the King’s person, there may have been an awareness among the aristocracy that their influence was a poor imitation of the real power wielded by their ancestors. Politics and war service offered a minority (from which all women were obviously excluded) the chance of distinction, but many were plagued by ennui, particularly since, in order to find some sort of occupation for the huge court at Versailles, many posts had been subdivided, so that even nominal functions of servitude, such as removing the King’s hunting boots, left their holders with practically nothing to do. Gambling must have offered relief from the monotony of the court routine, a chance to behave competitively and to provide a proof, in a sense, of character. This is not to suggest that either gambling or etiquette were consciously invoked by the King as a means of keeping the post-Fronde aristocracy distracted, but when the opportunity to show one’s mettle socially through power or skill is removed, it is plausible that energy would be channeled into aleatory, or chance-dependent activities.

An economic reason is equally sustainable. Since aristocrats were expected to maintain an enormously expensive standard of living, of which a sumptuous wardrobe was but one example, many were constantly strapped for cash, and with no prospect of adding to their coffers, for there was no honorable way in which to earn money. They were forbidden to engage in most trades or business, with the exception of wholesale overseas trade, which Louis attempted to encourage, nor were they permitted to work their land on anything but a limited scale. The Church and the army were the only professions it was possible to embrace. Gambling thus became a way of life, the resultant debt often relieved by marriage to rich commoners which served only to further dissolve the aristocrat’s grasp on power. Gaming on such a scale, though, could not be wholly justified on the grounds of economy, as there was clearly a good deal of pleasure to be had from it, not least the opportunity to demonstrate the gambler’s superiority to worldly fortune.

Just as social status was manifested in conspicuous consumption, so too was it demonstrated by conspicuous waste. Stoicism in the face of loss was the mark of a gentleman, as shown by the Marquis de Beaumont, who calmly gambled away his entire fortune at one sitting without uttering a single remark on the matter. D’Antin, Athénaïs’s son by Montespan, inherited his mother’s passion with rather more success, winning the equivalent of over a million dollars in today’s money at cards.

After Athénaïs, the most famous gambler at court was the Marquis de Dangeau, one of her most skillful gaming cronies, who was able to exist entirely on his winnings. His impassive features made a major contribution to his success. Mme. de Sévigné observed that he played so well amid the distracted chatter of his partners that he could win as much as 200,000 francs a month. Athénaïs was so fond of the Marquis that she persuaded Louis to give him the coveted
brevet,
the right of entry to the King’s chamber that her father and brother enjoyed, and later a position in the Grand Dauphin’s household. Since his enormous winnings often permitted him to act as Athénaïs’s banker, she also obtained an apartment at Versailles for Dangeau, on condition that he created a poem from a series of rhymes dreamed up by the King.

Whether or not she had a right to a stool in other situations, the freedom of the royal purse made Athénaïs queen of the tables, and the gold with which she strewed them was yet another public symbol of her status. But gambling also seems to have answered a need in her character and provided her with a release from the strains imposed by her position. Psychologically, gambling can be seen as a rebellion against logic, intelligence, moderation and renunciation, amorally appealing to those who experience their lives as in some way constricted, and yet containing its own penance in the guilt it provokes from the losses it entails. “The tension of gambling . . . is logically inexplicable . . . The craving for this strange thrill frequently overshadows the desire to win . . . The element of insecurity, win or lose, is of prime importance, and one of the prerequisites for that strange thrill.”
⁸

Had not Athénaïs, in some sense, staked her career, her reputation, her status at court on the chance of Louis’s affections? Recalling the sequestered life she had led behind the screen of Louise de La Vallière, the fear instilled in her by her husband and Lauzun, the sniping of La Maintenon and the threat of transient rivals, it seems likely that the tables offered her an outlet for the expression of the gamble upon which her life as
maîtresse en titre
was founded. Unlike everyone else, Athénaïs might not have been afraid of Louis, but she was always afraid of losing him. Mme. de Caylus observed that Louis loved her because she always needed to be reconquered, but the strain of maintaining her enticing aloofness, even as her vanity recoiled from the humiliations to which she was obliged to subject it, must have been intense. Athénaïs’s notorious tempers, and the days she spent alone in bed, tortured with migraine, could be interpreted as the negative symptoms of such strain, while careless, flamboyant gambling represented a stimulating catharsis.

Athénaïs’s experience as favorite was an extreme case of the tensions felt by many women at court, obsessed as they were with precedence and dependent on the goodwill of their husbands. Gambling mania in women seemed even more desperate. Unlike their husbands, female courtiers had not even the pretense of estate management or military activity to distract them, and as the aristocracy settled permanently into Versailles, many of the traditional occupations of the chatelaine — caring for the poor and sick, managing the household accounts, supervising the domestic functions of a great estate — became superfluous, if not a downright embarrassment, since a quiet, busy life on one’s provincial estate was viewed as a disgrace. Hence gambling, along with dress, gallantry and squabbles about the privileges of rank, was the only recourse of those who were not inclined to join Queen Marie-Thérèse in her endless and gloomy devotions. The financial and moral consequences of gambling were just as detrimental for women. It was not uncommon for them to pawn their jewels, accept bribes to influence their husbands or even to prostitute themselves to settle their debts. La Palatine described a scandalous incident in which two ladies gambling in Paris accused one another of cheating and asked a captain of dragoons to settle the dispute. The lady he found against was so incensed that she slapped the officer in the face, whereupon he turned her skirts over her head, in order, he claimed, to ascertain whether the insult should be avenged with a duel or a kiss. As the cards turned, it seemed that ladies’ manners were in as great a peril as their purses.

In fact, as the century progressed, the dissolute behavior of women became a common theme among contemporary commentators. The tongues and morals of womanhood appeared to have become as loose as their
déshabillés.
The Princesse de Monaco, who was generous with her favors, was heard to remark gaily of Louis’s penis that, although his power was great, his scepter was very small, unlike that of his cousin Charles of England. Hardly a joke for a lady. Another of Louis’s casual flings, the Princesse de Soubise, who maintained her delicate, red-haired good looks with a diet of chicken, fish and salad, outraged her friends by contriving to have her husband sent away from court so that she was able to pursue the King. Louis, predictably, surrendered, but La Soubise was furious when she learned that, although he would increase her pension, he would not offer her the court position that had been the object of the exercise. Mme. de Sévigné commented, in a loyal double entendre, that her friend “has too much good advice to raise the standard of such perfidy with so little prospect of enjoying it for long,” but when La Soubise had the poor judgment to complain of the shabby rewards of her prostitution, Mme. de Sévigné, along with everyone else in society, cut her. The Princesse consoled herself by building the Hôtel de Soubise, still one of the loveliest houses in Paris.

Not all French ladies were as frugal in their diet as the Princesse de Soubise. The English traveler Robert Dallington had remarked upon the prodigious greed of Frenchwomen as early as 1604, in his
View of France;
by Louis XIV’s reign their appetites were positively scandalous. A magistrate attending a court ball in 1667 was disappointed when the lovely dancers appeared to do nothing but eat. Queen Marie-Thérèse was notoriously greedy, and addicted to her Spanish chocolate. She complained that no one enjoyed the spicy Castilian food she prepared in her own apartments, but when she dined in company she gobbled busily, complaining that everyone would eat her food and leave her nothing, which the King thought was very funny. Louis’s own appetite was terrifying, as evinced by the veritable ordeal of refreshments ladies had to endure on journeys with him.

Perhaps his insistence that women did not refuse food was a polite way of disguising his own greed. The King dined twice a day, and a typical meal might consist of four plates of soup, one pheasant, one partridge, stewed mutton with garlic, ham and salad, pastries, fruit and hard-boiled eggs. In case he was peckish during the night, the royal chamber was provided with the
en cas de nuit:
three loaves, three cold dishes, two bottles of wine and a decanter of water. Louis’s bulimic eating was of a piece with his other traits — his building mania, his love of the vast, grandiloquent paintings of Le Brun, his love of accumulation and opulent décor, his sexual voracity. He ate as he was determined to do everything else, like a god. Although the fork had been in use since 1648, the King, and most of the court, continued to eat with their fingers. Molière once complained that some of the King’s officers had said he was not good enough to eat with them, and Louis punished their snobbishness by making a midnight feast of his
en cas de nuit,
sharing it with Molière in his bedroom. The King had dipped his fingers into the same dish as the playwright, and no one snubbed Molière after that.