Athenais (52 page)

8
. Ibid., p. 171.

9
. Poucher,
Les Trois Grands Divertissements de Versailles.

CHAPTER FIVE

1
. Blunt,
Art et Architecture en France.
For a discussion of Versailles and the theory of the baroque, see pp. 130–142, 302–311.

2
. Sharing with Jupiter
Has naught of dishonor
And doubtless it can only be glorious
With the King of the Gods to be rivalrous.

3
. Louis XIV,
Oeuvres.

4
. Mme. de Caylus.

5
. When Mortemart perceived
Montespan had conceived
He sang with his theorba,
“Alleluia.”
A theorba is an obsolete form of lute.

6
. Mademoiselle.

CHAPTER SIX

1
. Quoted in Michel de Decker,
Louis XIV,
p. 119.

2
. Voltaire,
Le Siècle de Louis XIV.

3
.
Memoirs of Madame de Montespan
(London, 1754).

4
. Voltaire,
Le Siècle de Louis XIV.

5
. Petitfils,
Madame de Montespan.

6
. Mitford,
The Sun King,
p. 55.

7
. Petitfils,
Madame de Montespan.

8
. Mademoiselle.

9
. Madame.

10
. Mme. de Sévigné,
Selected Letters,
p. 61.

11
. Ibid., p. 63.

12
. Marquis de Saint-Maurice,
Lettres sur la Cour de Louis XIV.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Mme. de Sévigné,
Selected Letters,
p. 116.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1
. Charlie Steen, chapter 4 in
The Reign of Louis XIV,
ed. Sonnino.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Saint-Simon.

4
. Mme. de Maintenon. See General Sources.

5
. Mme. de Lafayette, quoted by Mme. de Sévigné. See General Sources.

6
. With regard to the names of Athénaïs de Montespan’s children by Louis XIV, to avoid confusion, I refer to them by the titles which they were eventually given, e.g., the Duc du Maine. However, their titles were not officially bestowed until the children had been formally legitimated, though they were used prior to the conclusion of the legitimization process.

7
. Quoted in Petitfils,
Madame de Montespan.

8
. Mme. de Maintenon.

9
. The quotation is widely attributed to Ninon de Lenclos.

10
. Saint-Simon.

11
. Mme. de Maintenon.

12
. Bossuet,
Oeuvres et Correspondance.

13
. Mme. de Sévigné.

14
. Ibid.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1
. Louis XIV,
Oeuvres.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Mme. de Caylus.

4
. Petitfils,
Madame de Montespan.

5
. Quoted in Beaussant,
Louis XIV, Artiste.

6
. Louis XIV,
Oeuvres.

7
. Attributed in numerous works to Abbé Testu.

8
. Louis XIV,
Oeuvres.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Quoted in Dunlop,
Louis XIV,
p. 217.

11
. Louis XIV,
Oeuvres.

12
. Colbert, in a 1671 letter to the Duc de Chaulnes, then Ambassador of Rome.

13
. Time, which destroys all, respecting your power,
Allows me to clear the years of this work,
Every poet who yet wishes to be immortal,
Must acquire your approbation.
There is no beauty in my writings,
Of which you do not know the least traces,
Oh! Who knows like you the beauties and the graces,
Words and looks, all is charm in you.

14
. Hoffmann,
Society of Pleasures,
p. 58.

15
. Letter to the Comte d’Olonne, 1656, quoted in
Recueil de Textes Littéraires Français, XVII
^e
Siècle,
eds. Chassang and Senninger, p. 49.

16
. Williams,
Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV.

CHAPTER NINE

1
. This anecdote is mentioned in many sources, and the case is discussed in detail in Guitton, “Cas de Conscience pour un Confesseur du Roi: Madame de Montespan,” in
Nouvelle Revue Theologique
(Louvain, 1955).

2
. Mme. de Maintenon.

3
. Couton,
La Chair et L’Ame.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Ibid.

CHAPTER TEN

1
. Mme. de Sévigné,
Selected Letters,
p. 165.

2
. Ibid., p. 194.

3
. Ibid., p. 215.

4
. Roche,
La Culture des Apparences,
p. 59.

5
. Berthelée,
Inventaire des Documents des Archives Municipales de Mont-pellier.

6
. Mitford,
The Sun King,
p. 64.

7
. Lewis,
The Splendid Century,
p. 41.

8
. E. Bergler,
The Psychology of Gambling
(New York, 1958), quoted in Dunkley,
Gambling: A Social and Moral Problem in France 1685–1792,
pp. 5–6.

9
. Quoted in Petitfils,
Madame de Montespan.

10
. Mme. de Sévigné.

11
. Ibid.

12
. The one limps and walks with a cane
The other is strong and rotund
The one is thin to the furthest point The other bursts with embonpoint.

13
. This study is quoted in Roche,
La Culture des Apparences.

14
. Mitford,
The Sun King,
p. 58.

15
. Capefigue, “La Marquise de Montespan.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1
. The
chambre des filles
was distinct from the formal posts of
dames d’honneur
and
dames d’atour
given to noblewomen who attended on the Queen and other female members of the royal household. It referred particularly to the young unmarried women who attended on Madame, the wife of Monsieur, but also included young women who attended court, hoping to make their way in society and, aided by their families, to find a suitable husband.

2
. Mme. de Sévigné,
Selected Letters,
p. 209.

3
. La Vallière was common,
La Montespan a peeress
La Ludres was a canoness,
All three were all for one.
It is the greatest of potentates
Who assembles all estates.
The joke here is that Louis’s choice of mistresses represents all three estates — Church, aristocracy and commoners — the divisions of French society from which its parliaments were drawn.

4
. The Duchesse de Valentinois, Diane de Poitiers, was the famously imperious and avaricious mistress of Henri II.

5
. Quoted in Richardt,
Le Soleil du Grand Siècle.

6
. Truc,
Madame de Montespan.

7
. Ibid.

8
. The Duc du Maine’s letters are discussed in Hastier,
Vieilles Histoires, Etranges Enigmes,
pp. 39–49. The existence of the little book is not mentioned by either Saint-Simon or Mme. de Sévigné, and there is a degree of controversy as to its authorship. Most people assume that it was dictated by La Maintenon, but Louis Racine claimed that his father, the great writer Jean Racine, was responsible.

9
. Pevitt,
The Man Who Would Be King,
p. 249.

10
. Lewis,
The Splendid Century,
p. 244.

11
. Abbé de Choisy,
Mémoires.

12
. This pun on the Marquise’s name renders it as “Madame Now” or, as we might put it, the woman of the moment.

13
. Bussy-Rabutin. See General Sources.

14
. From a contemporary pamphlet entitled
Le Passe Temps Royal, ou, Les Amours de Mlle de Fontanges
(The Royal Pastime, or the Loves of Mlle. de Fontanges).

The first French newspaper, Renaudot’s
Gazette
was founded in 1638 and was soon followed by the
Mercure Français
and the
Mercure Galant.
Since the press was censored, these newspapers tended to be rather innocuous in their references to the court, focusing on politely gossipy stories about high society. To cater to more lurid tastes, a burgeoning pamphlet industry provided information about politics, wars, the Church and criminal or sexual scandals, often with woodcut illustrations. Since the pamphlets were produced irregularly and often anonymously, they were harder to trace and were therefore far more satirical and disrespectful in tone than the mainstream press. As a gesture of caution, well-known figures were disguised with pseudonyms, just as Madame de Sévigné disguised the characters in her letters, but these aliases were so flimsy that the real identity of the subjects was usually obvious. It is suggested that one of the reasons Louis was so exigent in his demands to the Dutch after their defeat in the wars was his outrage at the portraits of him produced in the pamphlet press.

15
. Charming object, gift worthy of the skies
Your beauty comes from the hand of the Gods And is it not an image of Parnassus
You shall see in the story I trace
Since my verses present so much grace
That to be offered to the tamer of humans
Accompanied by a word from your mouth
And presented by your divine hands.

16
.
Chaise de commodité
literally means “chair of convenience,” i.e., a lavatory.

17
. Once at the court I was viewed as an equal,
Mistress of my King, I defied a rival,
Never did favor take such swift leave
Never was fortune so swift destroyed,
Oh, that distance is short
From the home of the court to the horror of the grave.

18
. Quoted in Davet,
Mademoiselle de Fontanges.

CHAPTER TWELVE

All quotations in this chapter relating to La Reynie’s investigation of the Affair of the Poisons are taken from Ravaisson,
Archives de Bastille,
t. IV à t. VII.

1
. This English translation of La Fontaine’s riddle is taken from Mossiker,
The Affair of the Poisons.

2
. Davis and Farge,
A History of Women in the West.

3
. Mme. de Sévigné,
Selected Letters,
p. 196.

4
. Quoted in Niderst,
Les Français Vus par Eux-Mêmes.

5
. Cited in Lebigre,
L’Affaire des Poisons.

6
. Mme. de Sévigné.

7
. The Duchesse de Bouillon’s cheeky remarks were quoted with delight by many contemporary commentators, including Mme. de Sévigné, though it is suggested that the duchess polished them for posterity after her interrogation.

8
. Petitfils,
L’Affaire des Poisons.

9
. Briggs,
Communities of Belief.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Ibid.

12
. Keith Thomas observes in
Religion and the Decline of Magic
that “acceptable evidence for the literal reality of ritual devil-worship, whether in England or on the Continent, is extremely scanty.” One of the principal discussions of Madame de Montespan’s involvement in black magic occurs in Francis Mossiker’s
The Affair of the Poisons.
Mossiker’s interpretation of witchcraft practices in seventeenth-century France is based on Margaret Murray’s elaboration of the story of the pre-Christian witch cult suggested by Jacob Grimm in
Deutsche Mythologie
(1835), and yet the conclusions Murray drew from this were almost totally groundless. It is extraordinary that so many writers seem to have accepted such evidence as proof that the Black Mass occurred, let alone that Madame de Montespan was involved in it, when most historians of the subject concur that the evidence is dubious.