Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (43 page)

It was to her confessor however that Françoise confided that another aspect of her duties had not ceased: the King still made sexual demands upon her; she described these occasions as
‘penibles'
(burdensome). Perhaps she hoped that the confessor would sympathise with this problem of a woman in her seventies; instead, he told her quite sharply that this was still part of her chosen destiny: ‘It is at the same time an act of patience, of submission, of justice and of charity.' As it was, Françoise was Louis XIV's ‘Madame Solidity': ‘Kings have majesty,' said Louis, ‘and Popes have sanctity but you have solidity.' He sometimes addressed her as such in the presence of his ministers, meeting in her room, when he enquired what ‘Your Solidity’ might think on a certain topic.
²²

To the country at large, particularly the soldiers in the French armies, Madame de Maintenon was increasingly regarded as a possible source of help. For example, the soldiers at the new French fortress of Fuenterrabia on the borders of Spain wrote to her in December 1705 under the grandiose title of ‘Protectress of the Realm': they wanted pay and also clothing, jackets and shirts – ‘our sergeants, Madame, are no happier than us', and in general implored her ‘glorious protection’.
²³

In all this Madame de Maintenon herself suffered increasingly bad health. Rheumatism beset her, cold increased it (but the King could see nothing wrong with having all the windows open), and her chamber was often so crowded with men on official business that she could hardly retire to bed. She sat in her ‘niche', a covered chair, to ward off drafts. By November 1704 she was describing herself as ‘sick and old'; the following May things were worse: ‘The life we live here kills me, I am no longer made for this world.'

The flood of petitioners who sought her patronage also caused her pain, as she confided to Marguerite de Caylus. If the King honoured her wishes, he would have less to dispose of elsewhere. If he refused, ‘he will upset me. If he upsets me, he has too much feeling for me not to be annoyed, so I become a sadness in his life. Do you think this was God's plan in bringing me close to him?' Françoise told Madame de Glapion that she felt like someone backstage at the theatre where ‘the enchanted palace' was revealed as mere canvas: in short, ‘I see the world in all its ugliness.' She would even return to America (that is, the West Indies where she was raised) if she was not told that God wanted her to stay.
²⁴

Did it ever occur to Françoise, weary and often racked with pain, that Athénaïs had had the better deal out of life? The Marquise de Montespan had begun with supreme beauty, given and received much sensual pleasure and ended with a life full of good works. At Oiron, a magnificent Renaissance building Athénaïs bought with money given to her by the King, she created a hospice in 1703 for 100 poor men and women. She died in May 1707 at the spa at Bourbon which she had once visited at the height of her powers as
maîtresse en titre,
with every royal governor trying to greet her on her way. Athénaïs was sixty-seven. Her will testified to her deep and practical interest in charities; the possessions she left included two pictures of herself as Magdalen, plenty of pious books, some miniatures of the King – and thirty pairs of corsets. Before her death, the King had reduced her pension among his other economies: Athénaïs accepted the deprivation with equanimity on the grounds that all her money went to the poor anyway.

Montespan, that saturnine and tortured man, had rejected her request for pardon, which had been inspired by Athénaïs's Jansenist-inclined confessor. (Father de La Tour did rather better in persuading her that it was her Christian duty to eat less.) Yet when he died in 1701, from whatever motives, last-minute possessiveness or generosity, he made her executrix of his will. Her own death was, according to d'Antin, her son by Montespan, the only one of her children present, ‘the most firm and Christian death one could witness'. The funeral was delayed by rows between various local clergy and did not take place until July; then Athénaïs was interred in the church of the Cordeliers at Bourbon with a simple square stone plaque in the wall engraved as follows: ‘Here lies the body of Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, marquise de Montespan.'
²⁵

At least d'Antin had not suffered from the maternal deprivation of his childhood (to say nothing of his disagreeable father Montespan). He was a popular and successful courtier, a Maréchal de Camp, made Governor of Orléans in 1707. He had inherited something of his mother's taste for grand gestures. This was the year in which he entertained Louis XIV on his estate at Petit-Bourg, choosing to remove an entire chestnut avenue overnight because it obstructed the view from the King's bedroom; in the morning nothing was to be seen, not even cart-ruts, ‘as if a fairy had waved her wand'. Now Louis was told the news of Athénaïs's death in a letter from d'Antin as he was about to go hunting. He did not cancel the expedition but on return adjourned to his own room, indicating that he wished to be alone. The courtiers heard him pacing late into the night. But when the bold Adelaide asked him whether there was to be no outward show of grief, the King merely replied that the Marquise de Montespan had been dead to him ever since she had left Versailles.
²⁶

Louise de La Vallière – Sister Louise de La Miséricorde – lasted another three years. She was not quite sixty-six when she died in June 1710, and had spent over half her life as a Carmelite nun. On hearing this news, Louis repeated virtually the same words with which he had greeted the death of Athénaïs: from the moment she found God, Louise had been dead to him. He did however have a long talk with his confessor and take Communion the next day.

Like many women whose allure owed much to youthful freshness, Louise had long since lost her early prettiness. The extreme penances she imposed upon herself did not help and she was positively emaciated by the time of her death. By 1701 Liselotte wrote that ‘not a soul' would now recognise the former Duchesse de La Vallière. Louise was buried, according to the custom of the Carmelite Order, under a simple mound of earth, a small stone indicating her name in religion and the date of her death.
²⁷

In contrast to the illegitimate children of Athénaïs, who were largely indifferent to their mother, Marie-Anne de Conti had been faithful in her visits to Louise. There was therefore some justified satisfaction for Marie-Anne in the fact that she alone was allowed to wear mourning for her mother: the miasma of the Double Adultery still hung about Françoise-Marie and Madame la Duchesse; to their annoyance, mourning was forbidden to them.

Madame de Maintenon, while complaining (quite a lot) of her daily round, found increasing comfort in the company of the young. Her love of the company of small children was no affectation while, unfashionably for the period, she had no time for pets. When the Marquis de Villette offered her some rare birds, she replied that she much preferred children. So a human pet, a little Moor named Angola, was substituted for the birds. Angola was educated and also converted to Catholicism: he died young, blessing, we are told, the name of his protectress. A young Irishwoman who was also a protégée proved luckier: she went back to her native country and, blessing Maintenon equally, married a rich man.
²⁸

A typical lament from Françoise of 1709 – ‘One has either to die or be alone on earth for I have scarcely any new friends' – ignored the reality of her cosy circle. There were the sympathetic women of the next generation to her own such as Sophie de Dangeau, who was forty in 1704. Sophie had begun life at court as a maid-of-honour to the Bavarian Dauphine, being herself descended from the Bavarian royal family by a morganatic marriage. She married the journal-keeping, high-rolling Dangeau as his second wife. Family feeling from Marianne-Victoire went just so far: she threw a hysterical fit when she heard of the signature ‘Sophie de Bavière' at the wedding and the more plebeian ‘Sophie de Lowenstein' had to be substituted. It was, wrote Madame de Sévigné, a ‘brilliant and ridiculous scene'.
²⁹

Poverty, noble birth and the blonde looks of ‘the angels' all made Sophie utterly suitable from Françoise's point of view – and also the King's. In fact Sophie rather resembled the late Angelique de Fontanges, except that she was modest, spiritual and virtuous; all this and a graceful dancer too. One has glimpses of the kind of female intimacy in which the King was wrapped in the notes exchanged between Françoise and Sophie. For example, Françoise told Sophie that the King wanted her to come to dine with them tomorrow and play
brelan,
a game of cards. This was an advance warning so that Sophie should not take the famous incapacitating medicine for a purge that day. ‘And pip, pip our stomachs!' scrawled Sophie on the note in return. ‘I shall come, I shall find health and money, two great miracles.'
³⁰

Then there was Marie-Jeanne d'Aumale, who was roughly Adelaide's age and acted as Françoise's confidential secretary from 1705 onwards.
³¹
Coming from an ancient family of Picardy, Marie-Jeanne lacked looks but was clever, well read and industrious. She was also a lively correspondent: witness her description of the royal doctor Fagon, whose wig fell so far over his face when campaigning that if his nose had not been so big ‘no one would have known which was the front and which was the back of his head'. Then there were her droll farming reports about ‘the pearl of cows' who gave four and a half pints of milk a day, or the duck who met an unfortunate end and had to be replaced by three others to avoid the displeasure of ‘Madame'. The merits of liveliness in entertaining not so much Madame de Maintenon but the ever-present Louis should never be underestimated.

Meanwhile Marguerite de Caylus, her marriage a disaster and her husband now dead, had been languishing in Paris receiving strict advice from Françoise on her conduct. This was the tenor of her remarks: ‘Bring up your children, look after your affairs, do my commissions and above all satisfy your parish priest [of Saint-Sulpice].'
³²
Doing Françoise's commissions was a work in itself, since the former governess was fond of a bargain, especially if Marguerite was there to hunt it out. Marguerite was advised to establish a relationship with some good second-hand clothes dealers: she should look out for bargains in skirts, petticoats and gloves because Françoise had heard that things in Paris were cheap: a grey-brown damask sample was wanted, not too thick so that it would not be too expensive. The tone is also sometimes sanctimonious, and there was indeed that side to Françoise: ‘A costume can never be correct if it might lead to sin,' for example. Yet the femininity of her youth creeps in too: ‘If we take Barcelona I'll wear green and pink if the Archduke Charles [the rival candidate for the Spanish throne] falls into our hands.'
³³
(Neither thing happened.) In 1708 Marguerite returned to Versailles and occupied an apartment above Françoise, so that she could be summoned to her side via a convenient shared chimney.

Françoise-Charlotte d'Aubigné, transformed into the Duchesse de Noailles by the excellent worldly marriage arranged by her aunt, was also part of the support group: Maintenon, no longer part of the elder Françoise's way of life, was donated to her niece two weeks before her wedding on 30 March 1698. Françoise-Charlotte's aristocratic future made up for the lifelong disappointment afforded by Charles d'Aubigné. He died in 1703 having been finally confined to a rest-home for elderly gentlemen of good family. Charles's
bourgeoise
wife Geneviève, so much disliked by Françoise, was – more or less against her will – confined to a similar establishment for ladies. There were the
maréchaux
of the army too, with most of whom Maintenon was on excellent terms, and with whom she corresponded, discussing the King's wishes.

This satisfactory network of alliances was unfortunately matched by the Cabal, as it became known, at Meudon, home of the Dauphin. Here Madame la Duchesse, Marie-Anne de Conti and others including Athénaïs's son the Duc d'Antin told malicious stories about Tante – and looked to the time when the Dauphin would become King. It was hardly surprising that they should do so: Louis XIV would celebrate his seventieth birthday on 5 September 1708, and at such times, as Saint-Simon duly noted: ‘the thoughts of everyone are turning towards the future.’
³⁴
The viciousness of the Cabal would be seen at its height in the events of 1708, and the chief victim would be the Dauphin's son Bourgogne.

The year began well enough with celebrations at which the sixteen-year-old English Princess Louisa Maria in yellow velvet and diamonds was among the beauties. She opened the ball with her brother in a gallery lit by two thousand candles.
³⁵
An incident in February was however a presage of disaster: Adelaide miscarried while at Marly. She was in the early stages of a new pregnancy (little Bretagne was just over a year old) and it seems that her ladies had not wanted her to make the journey, given her difficult gynaecological history. The King's will was however absolute, and he wanted her with him. Then, as he was feeding the carp in his fish pond after Mass, awaiting Adelaide in order to go on to Fontainebleau, a message was whispered in his ear: the Duchesse de Bourgogne was ‘injured' (the contemporary euphemism for a miscarriage). After a short pause, the King made a brief announcement as to what had happened. Then a group of gentlemen with more temerity than tact made noises to the effect that this was ‘the greatest misfortune in the world', since the Duchesse had already experienced such difficulty in bearing children and might now not be able to have any more.