Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (15 page)

Aged thirty-five in 1662, Bossuet was a follower of St Vincent de Paul, whose attitude to the poor he much admired and promulgated in a series of sermons: ‘No, no, oh rich men of our time!' he once declaimed in the face of a large body of them. ‘It is not for you alone that God causes his sun to rise.' Queen Anne (herself an admirer of St Vincent de Paul) heard Bossuet preach with approval in 1657 and he was then made preacher-extraordinary to the King. In 1659 he delivered a sermon in Paris on ‘The outstanding dignity of the poor in the Church'. At his first court sermon he announced to the great ones before him that ‘honours' would not follow them into the next life. It will be obvious that in an age when flattery was the daily bread of court life, this man was not a flatterer. At the same time his lessons were delivered in such magnificent style that everyone flocked to hear them. Sainte-Beuve, in a happy image, would describe his style of oratory as ‘like the stops of a huge organ in a vast cathedral nave'. His solemn, handsome countenance only enhanced the impression Bossuet made.
³⁴

All this time, while the King made love and both Queens lamented, there was one person whose attitude to her religion was quite as literal as that of the two pious royal women. This was Louise de La Vallière herself. After a few months, she could hardly bear her sense of her own sinfulness, so painfully coupled with her abject devotion to the King. On top of it all, Louise, who was no court politician, had become unwittingly involved in an intrigue between Henriette-Anne and the dashing Comte de Guiche when details of it were confided to her by a fellow maid-of-honour, Françoise de Montalais.
³⁵
Louise incurred the temporary displeasure of Louis, who could not believe that his sweet little mistress had kept anything from him. All this acted further on a palpitatingly guilty conscience.

On 2 February Bossuet began preaching his series of Lenten sermons at the Louvre. On the one hand he commended Queen Anne, comparing her to Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. On the other hand he was soon ripping into the King's immoral behaviour, under the scarcely disguised figure of the biblical David who had in his early life been swayed by unlawful passion for another man's wife. (There was no perceived connection here with the ‘other' David, a soulful figure praising the Lord with his harp, of whom a portrait bought from the Mazarin estate hung in the King's own room.) Biblical imagery was and remained a convenient ruse for denouncing the all-powerful sovereign of the country: not only David but Solomon and Ahasuerus were royal wrongdoers who could be usetully cited.
³⁶

It was all too much for Louise. On 24 February she bolted from the court to the Convent of the Visitation at Chaillot.

*
The Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin
by Louis XIV, begun in 1661, went through several versions; although the King received considerable assistance, he always had an essential role in the publication, thus the sentiments are his.
⁵

* It can still be seen today at the palace of the Institut de France, a magnificent monument, spared the depredations of the French Revolution because it was used as a grain store.

* The King wrote from Dijon in 1668: ‘If I didn't love you so much I wouldn't write because I have nothing to say to you after the news which I've already given to my brother.'
¹⁵

* Alexandre Dumas, in the third novel of
The Three Musketeers
series published in the mid-nineteenth century,
The Vicomte de Bragelonne (sic),
builds on this story, before passing on to her subsequent fate in
Louise de La Vallière.

* A
laVallière
is still noted in Larousse as a necktie with a large bow.

* Vaux-le-Vicomte remains to this day a magnificent monument to the high style of the so-called grand siècle – and to the perils of Icarus trying to fly higher than the Sun King.

* Modern scientific and genetic knowledge enables us to see that the desperate intermarrying of the Habsburgs, for reasons of state, was not calculated to produce healthy offspring (Carlos was the son of an uncle and niece). Marie-Thérèse and Louis, first cousins on both sides, got lucky with the healthy Dauphin, although their luck did not last. At the time frequent infant deaths in the children of great persons were attributed more sternly to the wrath of God with the parents concerned.

* Easter Communion had been obligatory in the Catholic Church since the fourth century and is still today a precept that must be fulfilled at least once a year ‘during paschal time' unless there is good reason to the contrary. Even the seventeenth-century state prisoner known as ‘the Man in the Iron Mask' was allowed to doff his mask to receive communion at Easter.
³²

* The name was applied by the hostile Jesuits to the beliefs of the followers of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen. Jansenism was not therefore a body of doctrine.

CHAPTER 5
Sweet Violence

Beauty embraces me wherever I find it, and I can easily yield to the sweet violence with which it sweeps me along.

– Molière,
Don Juan,
1665

O
n 24 February 1662 Louis XIV was in the midst of receiving the Spanish envoy, come to congratulate him on the birth of his son the previous November, when the news was whispered to him: ‘La Vallière has taken the veil!' The stately diplomatic visit was hurried along in a way that was hardly consonant with the dignity of Spain. And then Louis, swirling a dark grey cloak about him to cover his face, mounted his fastest horse. He galloped the three miles to the convent at Chaillot where his mistress had taken refuge.

The tearful reconciliation was sweet to both sides. Louise confessed all she knew about the tentative intrigue of Henriette-Anne and Guiche. A carriage was commanded and Louise returned to the court. She was in time for the rest of Bossuet's Lenten sermons: the general theme was the horrifying fate of those, especially kings, who died impenitent. According to Christ, Dives, the sinful rich man, was in Hell, Lazarus, the good beggar, in Heaven. One who did not die impenitent was of course the saint Mary Magdalen. And the organ-voiced orator preached about her too. His terms were resounding: ‘the heart of Magdalen is broken, her face is all covered in shame …' In spite of, or more probably because of, her own sense of shame, Louise was among the many people – men as well as women – in seventeenth-century France who adopted Magdalen as their favourite saint.
¹
Some of the most beautiful motets by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, suitable for women's voices, were titled
Magdalen Weeping
and
The Dialogue between Magdalen and Jesus
: ‘Weep, lament, Magdalen,' commanded the plangent texts. ‘That is what the love of the sweet Saviour asks of you.’
²

It has been noted that Henriette-Anne, not a noticeably Magdalen-like figure to the outward eye, had a painting by Correggio of the subject; the widowed Françoise Scarron had another version. With the exception of the Virgin Mary, no saint of either sex was painted so often at this period. There was even a tradition that Magdalen, fleeing persecution, had come to rest at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume near Aix and had been buried there: the road to La Sainte Baume was one of the most popular routes in France for pilgrims.
*
Somehow the figure of the Magdalen expressed the obsession of the times with sin – sin and salvation following penitence.

In fact the saint represented a collage of various women from the Gospels. In the sixth century Pope Gregory the Great had announced that Mary Magdalen, Mary of Bethany and the penitent woman in St Luke's Gospel who used precious ointment on the feet of Christ were all the same
beata peccatrix,
blessed sinner, redeemed whore. Since women loved to be painted in the role of the Magdalen, it was an important part of the representation that Magdalen's long hair, with which she had dried the feet of Christ, could be painted as flowing down across her bosom, sumptuously and of course penitently (long hair was the sign of a virgin, and married women were not generally painted with their tresses so erotically visible). It was significant that all the chief lovers of Louis XIV were painted as the Magdalen at one time or another; and so were the four chief mistresses of Charles II, whose first and longest-serving lover Barbara Villiers prided herself on her beautiful hair.
³

The affair of Louis XIV and Louise de La Vallière flourished on her return and for the next year without further interruptions; the tears of Marie-Thérèse, shed in front of her mother-in-law, and the embarrassing discussions she was insisting on having about fidelity by the summer of 1663 did not really count. Queen Anne also wept and prayed, but no official cognisance of the situation had to be taken: Louise was a secret love, not a
maîtresse en titre
like Barbara Villiers. As for the girl herself, she continued to assure the King of her devotion, which left her asking for nothing more than his love. How happy they could have been in another world where he was not the monarch, she was supposed to have exclaimed. And as for Louis, if not exactly in love with her at this point, since his maximum point of love was probably in the weeks and days before he conquered her resistance, he was happy enough with his young and charming mistress.

An English observer, Edward Browne, who was touring France with Christopher Wren, was charmed by the sight of her: ‘returning to Paris, the King overtook us in a
chaise roulante
with his mistress La Vallière with him, habited very prettily in a hat and feathers [probably the hat trimmed with white feathers which was part of the new uniform designed for the King's friends] and an especially fashionable jacket called a
Just-au-corps
.' To the Englishman the pair looked settled and content. In another incident whose ‘Condéscension' on Louis's part deeply impressed the courtiers that witnessed it, the King covered Louise's mass of tumbling fair hair with his own hat when she lost hers out riding. Such chivalrous gestures recalled the moment in his youth when he had thrown away his own sword because it had accidentally caused hurt to Marie Mancini.
⁴

But there were incipient problems. First, the King liked to give: it was part of his nature, his concept of his role, that the Sun King was bountiful. Louise however was neither greedy nor extravagant and thus gave him few opportunities for that warm feeling of generosity beloved of wealthy men. Her brother, the Marquis de La Vallière, benefited and received a position at court, but someone else, less of a hidden violet, could provide the Sun King with the opportunity to spread his rays further. Second, while the King might not consciously be seeking another serious entanglement at this point, he understood the feelings expressed by Molière's Don Juan: ‘Constancy is only good for fools. Every beautiful woman has the right to charm us … As for me, beauty embraces me wherever I find it, and I can easily yield to the sweet violence with which it sweeps me along.'
⁵
*

The third problem was of a different nature. In late March 1663 Louise de La Vallière fell pregnant; this could not have been totally unexpected, since there is no reason to believe that the King used contraception at this or any other moment.

Contraceptive knowledge did exist, and given that the need was as old as society, always had. The condom, made of animal membranes, although generally seen as an eighteenth-century prophylactic invention, was already in use in the middle of the seventeenth century, as recent archaeological discoveries have demonstrated.
⁶
Of more ancient and more universal provenance were tampons made of different materials, sponges soaked in vinegar or other astringents, or similarly constituted douches. These had always been used by prostitutes, and where the necessity existed, a too-rapidly-increasing family or an extramarital affair, doubtless by many others. Madame de Sévigné believed that her beloved daughter fell into the former category. ‘What, haven't they heard of astringents in Provence?' she enquired bitterly after the birth of Juliette's third child. Saint-Simon mentioned with approval that French duchesses rarely had more than two children, compared with the over-fertile Spaniards: in France, dukes knew how to limit their families. Then, as has been mentioned, there was the practical preventive of coitus interruptus, what the French Church called disapprovingly
étreinte réservée
(embrace withheld). Denunciations by the preachers of this so-called ‘sin of Onan', a biblical character who was suppose to have wasted his seed on the ground, makes it clear that withdrawal was widely used and, given a cooperative male, certainly the easiest method of avoiding conception.
⁷

Royal procreation, even outside marriage, like royal virility, was somehow different. There was a primitive instinct to regard a fertile king as symbolic of a fertile and successful country. The archetypal monarch Henri IV had left enough bastards for the survivors to be among the honoured members of society, even if Louis XIII had not added to their number. In 1663 you found César Duc de Vendôme, son of the fabulous mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées, and his sister the Duchesse d'Elboeuf; the Duc de Verneuil, Governor of Languedoc, was Henri's child by another woman and Jeanne-Baptiste, the powerful Abbess of Fontevrault (appointed as a mere child), by yet another. Rank was not an issue. Under the entry ‘Royal bastards' Antoine Furetiere's magisterial
Dictionnaire Universel
stated baldly: ‘the bastards of kings are princes.'

Louise, a girl without a husband, may possibly have tried to avoid conception by some of the whispered artificial expedients, although coitus interruptus was surely not part of the Sun King's vision of himself. It is more likely that she accepted the inevitable consequences of the King's sinful (but rapturous) love-making as part of the price. This would have been combined with just a
soupçon
of pride: after all, her children would be royal, and they would be
his
children. In a muddling way fertility was also considered one of the female virtues, even if the consequences might be awkward: as a saying on the subject had it, ‘A good land is a land that gives a good harvest.' Similarly, abortifacients, like contraceptives, were known since ancient times and passed from generation to generation of women: wormwood, hyssop, rue and ergot were all believed to be effective.
⁸
But there is no evidence that anyone ever tried to abort one of the King's children, regardless of the mother's marital status. What did happen in Louise's case was an attempt at concealment.

At the
Ballet of the Arts,
performed in the early part of 1663, Louise was still being described, in the lines of the poet Benserade, as the most beautiful shepherdess in the show, with that special ‘sweet languor’ in her melting blue eyes.
⁹
But as her pregnancy advanced before an expected birth-date in December, Louise was bought a house in Paris where she passed her time entertaining the court and playing cards. Did Queen Anne know? Most likely some rumour reached her. And Marie-Thérèse? Probably not. In any case the Queen herself was similarly occupied. After the births of her first two children, a boy and a girl of whom only the Dauphin survived, Marie-Thérèse would give birth to another daughter Marie-Anne in 1664 who died after six weeks, yet another in January 1667, a little Marie-Thérèse known as ‘the Petite Madame', and the desired second son Philippe Duc d'Anjou in August 1668. With La Vallière entering the maternal lists, the King would be found by August 1668 to have been responsible for no fewer than nine royal or quasi-royal births in six and three-quarter years.

Leaving aside the paternity of their offspring, however, the experience in childbirth of the two women, the wife and the mistress, was very different. The accouchement of the Queen of France was witnessed by as many people as could cram into the chamber: that was the custom. When the Dauphin was born, Louis himself flung open the window to the waiting crowds in the courtyard and shouted: ‘The Queen has given birth to a boy!'

On 19 December, Louise also gave birth to a boy, but in the greatest secrecy in a house in Paris. There was a story that the fashionable doctor Boucher who attended was escorted in an anonymous carriage and entered though a garden gate with his eyes bandaged. There he helped a masked lady give birth
¹⁰
… It was a story told of more than one mysterious beyond-the-law-of-the-Church birth. In the case of Louise, it may even have been true.

What is certain is that the boy was smuggled away by the loyal minister Colbert and his wife. It was Colbert who sent a note to the King: ‘We
[sic]
have a boy' – contradicting reports that Louis was actually present, lurking, also masked, in a corner of the room. The baby was baptised Charles, registered under a false surname, given suitably obscure parentage and brought up far from his mother. Louise returned to the court and, only a few days after a long and painful labour, was back in attendance at the midnight Mass on the eve of Christmas. Not for Louise the long lying-in period of recovery granted to the Queen of France, who would recline, surrounded by congratulatory crowds, for several weeks. Even Madame de Sévigné's daughter did not move till the tenth day, a period of rest generally thought essential to the preservation of youth and beauty, especially a graceful figure.

This child Charles died some two years later, not of neglect, but the victim of one of the many childhood maladies which plagued rich and poor alike. Nevertheless, there is evidence from her later life that Louise always regarded the children of her sin with more pious regret than maternal solicitude. She was soon back in her way of life as the King's pliant, submissive and allegedly secret mistress.

*

The year which followed was cruelly frustrating for the virtuous at court. None of the issues, foremost among them the King's adultery but including Louise's status, was either resolved or put aside. Louise for her part angrily spurned the idea of an arranged marriage to some complaisant nobleman of a certain age. This suggestion was not quite as gross or insensitive as it might seem, especially when Louise became pregnant with her second child in April. Kings and others were expected to provide cover – or security – for their unmarried mistresses. For example, the Duke of Savoy was congratulated by one of his ambassadors for having married off Gabrielle de Marolles so well: not only was his behaviour generous in itself but it might act as a ‘fish-hook’, pulling in future mistresses.
¹¹
But the whole idea upset Louise's romantic susceptibilities. As a married woman she too would have been committing adultery (like the King) and the whole fantasy of her quasi-holy devotion to the King would be shown up for what it was.