Athenais (39 page)

People saw with dismay that this Prince had not yet abandoned the irregularities of his youth, that he was becoming more and more the slave of his pleasures, and that he was advancing towards a disgraceful old age, in which his own glory and that of his country would be tarnished. Now the King was not only the head of the state, but its very soul; he was the country incarnate, a sort of visible Providence and the lieutenant of God on earth . . . What would have become of this royalty of divine essence and its divine and glorious mission with a Prince neglectful of his first duties, whose passions rose superior to all the laws of God and man, surrounded by women imploring a glance from him and by courtiers who had built up infamous hopes on the future scandals of a licentious reign? . . . Out of this slough Mme. de Maintenon drew Louis XIV; she brought him back to his duties, to the assiduous care of his realm, to the good example which he owed his subjects; she dissipated the clouds of pride which enveloped him, and made him descend from Olympus to inspire him with Christian sentiments of repentance, of moderation, of tenderness . . . and, above all, of humility.
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What price a little extraconjugal sex in return for such miracles? It might be argued, however, that since Mme. de Maintenon’s tenure as mistress coincided with the most disastrous wars, ruinous expenses and isolationist hubris of the reign, Louis might have been better to remain a Jupiter in the pagan realms of Athénaïs than to descend into Catholic bigotry in the virtuous bed of his pious widow. La Main-tenon’s own perception of her role in Louis’s life, however, corresponds with Lavallée’s invocation of the divine role of the King. It would be no exaggeration to say that she believed herself to have saved France, as well as her monarch, from the lubricious embrace of Athénaïs de Montespan.

On 30 July 1683, Mme. de Maintenon’s expectations changed dramatically. In May that year, the court had departed on the summer progress to inspect the troops stationed in Burgundy and Alsace. The Queen returned to Versailles in July with an abscess on her arm, from which she developed a fever. Doctor Fagon, the King’s new physician, bled her, and then, against the advice of the other surgeons, administered a huge dose of emetic. Marie-Thérèse went into violent convulsions and it became clear that she was going to die. Courtiers idling in the Galérie des Glaces were astonished to see Louis sprinting towards the temporary chapel to fetch the viaticum, tears streaming down his face. The Spanish Queen died peacefully, with the Grand Dauphin at her bedside weeping and kissing her hands. Through his own tears, Louis declared remorsefully: “This is the only grief she has ever caused me.”

The Queen was the only one of Louis’s women he had never loved. Such a sad, quiet, dutiful little life she had lived, the least vivid satellite in the Sun King’s orbit. In the last year of her life she had had the pleasure of her husband’s increased gentleness, but her existence had always been a marginal one, rewarded by the court only with dim respect rather than with love or indignation. Before she died, she whispered pathetically that she had known only one happy day since she became Queen. Was it perhaps her wedding day? Marie-Thérèse was a hopeless Queen for such a King, and not having done any harm is a sorry royal epitaph, but at least she died under the happy delusion that her husband had returned to her at last.

After visiting the corpse and sprinkling it with water, Louis departed immediately for Monsieur’s house at St. Cloud, since etiquette did not permit the monarch to remain in the same house as a corpse. He then repaired to Fontainebleau, where he was joined by Mme. de Maintenon as part of the Dauphine’s suite. The governess was attired in such voluminous mourning, and wore such a lugubrious expression, that Louis had to laugh at her excess of sincerity, and indeed it seemed that he himself had completely recovered from the death of his wife. He was sporting a fetching purple half-mourning, and appeared disinclined to relinquish the delights of the new hunting season out of respect for Marie-Thérèse.

Between La Maintenon’s affected gloom and Louis’s callousness, the only person who appears to have behaved with a proper sense of decency was Athénaïs de Montespan. She was disgusted by the lack of distress exhibited by the King, Monsieur and Mademoiselle. The latter, chastened, remarked that during Marie-Thérèse’s illness, Athénaïs had tended her faithfully, and that after her death she showed all her Mortemart breeding in the way she performed her duties. Unlike La Maintenon, smug in her billowing black, Athénaïs behaved like a great lady, possessed, as Mme. de Caylus put it, of “an elevated spirit,” who knew the value of her public role regardless of any compromised private integrity. Marie-Thérèse would have understood.

After the Queen’s heart had been embalmed and taken to Val de Grâce, her corpse was carried through the silent, black-draped rooms of Versailles and taken to St. Denis. On the way back, recalls Made-moiselle in her memoirs, everyone laughed a good deal in the carriages, while the accompanying musketeers amused themselves by hunting the plentiful game on the surrounding plain. No one was present to see the body interred. With Marie-Thérèse already forgotten, what was to become of Athénaïs, whose post as superintendent of the Queen’s household no longer existed?

Perhaps if it had not been for the Affair of the Poisons, Athénaïs might now have been granted her dream of becoming the King’s wife. It was clear that Louis, still a relatively young man, would marry again, but equally it was unlikely that he would choose to make a state alliance. No particularly alluring foreign princess was available, the House of Bourbon seemed assured of two generations of heirs, and Louis’s arrogance sought no strategic alliance in Europe (given the state of the treasury, it is just as well for his pride that he did not attempt to seek one). Bossuet was in despair lest the King’s new freedom inaugurate another phase of licentious behavior, and Athénaïs, having abandoned hope of becoming Louis’s wife herself, found that she agreed with her old enemy. “We must think of remarrying him as soon as possible,” she said. “Without that, so well do I know him, he will make a bad marriage sooner than none.”
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It was time for Louis to abandon public sins and sinner-esses and set an example befitting His Most Christian Majesty. It seemed sensible, therefore, for him to marry someone he liked, so that he should not be tempted into adultery once more. It was hardly difficult to identify the obvious candidate.

Many courtiers had already allied themselves to La Maintenon in anticipation of the King making her at least his official mistress. As Mme. de Maintenon left the Queen’s deathbed, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld had whispered to her, “Do not leave the King now, Madame. He needs you more than ever.” One faction at court was clearly confident that the governess’s power would now be formalized. The Abbé de Choisy explains why Louis would have made such a choice.

He was unwilling to marry through consideration for his people, and wisely judged that the princes of a second marriage might, in the course of time, cause civil wars. On the other hand, he could not dispense with a wife. Mme. de Maintenon pleased him greatly. Her gentle, insinuating wit promised him an agreeable intercourse capable of regenerating him after the cares of royalty. Her person was still engaging and her age prevented her from having children. To which we may add that Louis was sincerely desirous of leading a regular life.
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The Affair of the Poisons had brought home to Louis quite how desperate some women at court were to become his lover, and he was appalled by the stories of poisons and potions aimed at the possession of his person. His increasing religious faith was offended by the lurid revelations of the trials, and the reflection they cast on a society of women whose moral decline seemed to have descended beneath gallantry and gourmandizing, and yet whose behavior could be seen as having being encouraged by his own sinful example. The state had been compromised by the investigations and, as Louis saw it, he had therefore been compromised as well, which was intolerable to his self-esteem. A wife to whom he could be faithful would prevent him from falling in with the murderous schemings of the court ladies.

La Maintenon herself, however, was by no means certain of her position. Was it conceivable that the greatest monarch in the world could ally himself with a woman of very dubious pedigree, the widow of a disreputable poet and a former servant in his household? As long as Marie-Thérèse had been alive, Mme. de Maintenon was able to continue her mission for the domination of the King’s soul under the protection of his marriage. Without the Queen, she was dangerously exposed, a contingency she had apparently never accounted for. She wrote to her brother: “The longer I live, the more clearly I recognize the futility of making plans and projects for the future; God nearly always brings them to nought, and, as He is hardly ever taken into account when they are made, He does not bless them.” One senses that she felt aggrieved that God should have put her in such an inconvenient position. Her behavior in the weeks following Marie-Thérèse’s death indicates a great agitation of her normally tranquil spirits. She wandered about Fontainebleau at odd hours in floods of tears, complained of headaches and attacks of the vapors, and paid no attention when anyone spoke to her. The only power she had was to withhold herself sexually from Louis, perhaps in an attempt to force his hand, and a letter written to Mme. de Brinon a fortnight after the Queen’s death discreetly suggests as much. “I implore you to pray for the King, as he has more need of grace than ever to sustain a state contrary to his inclinations and habits.” No great sacrifice this, since for La Maintenon sex was always a weapon, never a pleasure.

What were Louis’s feelings at the time? Throughout the twenty-three years of his dynastic alliance with Marie-Thérèse, he had struggled with the conflicting exigencies of duty and desire, unable to lead the ordered personal life he longed for within the confines of his loveless marriage. Aged forty-five and becoming more and more pious, he was aware of the conflict between his own virility and the necessity of living an orderly public life. He had been troubled previously by his relationship with a married woman, but as Voltaire later remarked, “When he was no longer in love, his conscience made itself felt more keenly.”
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Athénaïs was no longer the tempestuous, enchanting beauty of the 1670s and even if he had wished to marry her, matters would have been complicated by the fact that Montespan was still alive. A wife he desired would save him from the temptations of the court, and now, since another state marriage was neither necessary nor particularly feasible, and Athénaïs no longer considered, it seemed reasonable that he should please himself. Moreover, Louis was methodical in his habits, and selecting the Marquise de Maintenon would continue two of them that were long established: replacing the current mistress with one of her ladies, and trusting as his confidants ministers who owed their status to merit rather than aristocratic birth. And as Lamartine suggested, “An attachment to Mme. de Maintenon seemed almost the same thing as an attachment to virtue itself.”

Louis’s natural choice was therefore the Marquise. However, to marry a commoner would be a violent assault on the God-given hierarchy of the French monarchy, and thus upon his own status and power. It was precisely such a disruptive misalliance that he had forbidden in the case of Lauzun and his cousin Mademoiselle. Françoise Scarron could never be an acknowledged Queen of France, taking precedence over the princesses of the blood — it would be an outrageous affront to what was perceived as the natural order of society. During his relationship with Athénaïs, Louis had learned that the law and public opinion could, if necessary, be swayed to his will, but marriage to La Maintenon required a more private acceptance.

That Louis had hit upon a solution is clear from the change in tone of La Maintenon’s letters. Rumors were already circulating about the King’s intentions, and La Maintenon was happy to encourage them. “There is nothing to reply on the subject of Louis and Françoise; those rumors do circulate — but I’d like to know why she would be unwilling?” wrote Mme. de Sévigné. “I should never have believed that difficulties in this matter should have come from her side.” This comment has been interpreted as an indication that La Maintenon had refused a proposal of marriage and was anxious to set the matter straight, but it is also likely that she would have started such a rumor precisely by denying it, in order that once again her public conduct should be seen as a model of modest discretion. Either way, the ex-governess can barely contain her joy. “Do not forget me before God,” she wrote on 20 September 1684 to Abbé Gobelin, “for I have a great need of strength to make use of my happiness.” The “vapors” from which she had been suffering departed, according to Mme. de Caylus, at the same time as the court from Fontainebleau.

The exact date of the marriage between Louis XIV of France and the quondam widow Scarron is uncertain. Mme. de Maintenon’s own letters suggest that it took place in June of 1684, when she writes to her brother with her usual mixture of humility and arrogance, “Our positions in life are different, mine brilliant, yours calm. God has put me where I am, I must do as best I can. He knows that I have not sought my position; I shall never rise higher, that is something I know all too well.” The Abbé de Choisy also places the marriage in 1684, noting that he presented Mme. de Maintenon with a copy of his book
Journal du Voyage en Siam
in 1687, “three years after her marriage.”
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Saint-Simon suggests that it occurred earlier, in the winter of 1683, and this is supported by the Abbé Langlois, who claims that the ceremony was conducted on the night of 9 October 1683. Such early dates are rather surprising given that Louis continued to wear his violet mourning for some months after the Queen’s death. Whenever it was held, the marriage ceremony was conducted in the chapel at Versailles, which had been prepared by Bontemps, Louis’s valet de chambre. The Mass was said by the ever-complaisant Père la Chaise, and the blessing by the Archbishop of Paris, Harlay. The witnesses were Louvois and the Marquis de Montchevreuil, whose wife was a good friend of La Maintenon. No documentary evidence of the marriage has ever been found.