The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (19 page)

As one court lady remarked, ‘These things may be considered trifles and in effect so they are between private persons, but it’s not the same when the Master is involved.’ It was felt that these ‘satiric barbs’ could have a decisive effect on people’s fortunes, for once the King had taken against an individual the prejudice was hard to shift. Years later Mme de Maintenon noted regretfully that when the King formed ‘a disadvantageous idea of someone it is almost impossible to efface it’ and the Comte de Bussy was likewise sure that Louis ‘gains poor impressions of people that others like to give him as easily as he gains towns’. Once instilled in his mind, these could only be dislodged with the utmost difficulty.
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Some people were apt to blame Athénaïs if the King seemed ill-disposed towards them when in reality she was not responsible. The Comte de Bussy, for example, developed a hatred for Athénaïs and her sister after he heard that Mme de Thianges had been saying disagreeable things about him to the King. However, at the time Bussy was already exiled from court for having written a scurrilous novel satirising prominent figures there and the King had been so furious about this that it was hardly fair to hold Athénaïs accountable for the Comte’s continued disfavour. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the Marquis de Saint-Maurice was adamant that Mme de Montespan ‘has never hurt anyone’, she was viewed by many as a malign force and this was not easily forgiven. In the words of the great preacher Bossuet, ‘To infect the ears of a prince, ah! It is a greater crime than poisoning the public fountains.’
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Some people maintained that Athénaïs was a shockingly callous woman. A possibly apocryphal story relates that one day she was riding in a coach with several ladies when it ran over a pedestrian. The other passengers were very upset by the incident, but Athénaïs was unmoved. Calmly she pointed out that such accidents took place every day without arousing their concern; why, then, should they worry simply because they had witnessed this one? Another example was cited by the Marquis de La Fare, who considered it reprehensible that Athénaïs failed to intercede when the Chevalier de Rohan (who was believed to have been a lover of Mme de Thianges) was condemned to death for treachery. Since Rohan’s treason had been of a very high order, it is hard to believe that such a plea would have had any effect, but La Fare contended it was ‘not the first time she displayed a hard heart, insensible to pity and gratitude’.
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It was hard for someone in Athénaïs’s position to avoid such criticisms, whether merited or not, but other faults of hers are less open to dispute. She was by all accounts proud and imperious, and her temper, which had always been short, deteriorated as she grew older. Her increasing corpulence as successive pregnancies took their toll on her figure and possibly a tendency to drink to excess may have contributed to her bouts of ill humour but, certainly, her rages became more easily provoked and unpredictable. All too often the King was on the receiving end of her tirades and this ultimately played an important part in alienating him from her.
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The King’s affair with Athénaïs is usually deemed to have started in 1667. Certainly, if one reads Mlle de Montpensier’s account of what happened between the King and her that summer, the conclusion is inescapable that that was when they consummated their relationship. However, one should perhaps sound a note of caution, for such events can rarely be dated with utter certainty. As late as February 1668 the Marquis de Saint-Maurice reported ‘the King loves Mme de Montespan and while she does not hate him, she is holding firm.’ Athénaïs did not become pregnant by the King until the summer of 1668 and it was only then that M. de Montespan became jealous. All this means that one cannot wholly reject the claims put forward by the magician Lesage during the Affair of the Poisons. He alleged that in late 1667 Mme de Montespan came to him because she wished ‘to attain the good graces of the King’. The implication is that at that point she and Louis were not on intimate terms and she wanted Lesage to use his occult powers to remedy the situation.
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In June 1667 Louis took the Queen and her ladies to see the army he had massed on France’s northern frontiers in preparation for an attack on Flanders. Louise was left behind at Saint-Germain on the pretext that she was pregnant, although normally that never prevented the King from taking his mistresses on voyages. Before leaving, Louis created her Duchesse de Vaujours and legitimised their daughter, who from now on was known as Mlle de Blois. Ostensibly, these were marks of high favour but shrewd observers considered them to be more in the nature of parting gifts.

Poor Louise realised she was being discarded and did her best to retrieve the situation. In July, when the Queen and her entourage were staying at La Fère, prior to rejoining the King, Louise turned up uninvited. The incensed Queen gave her an icy reception and most of her ladies did likewise. Mme de Montespan was especially scathing and was heard to say sanctimoniously, ‘God keep me from being the King’s mistress! But, if I were, I would be very ashamed in front of the Queen.’
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Next day the Queen and her ladies drove to a review of troops, which the King was conducting at Avesnes. When their destination was in sight, Louise’s coach suddenly overtook the Queen’s, but though this breach of protocol enabled her to reach the King first, Louis was not at all welcoming. Shortly afterwards the wretched Louise had to return to Versailles, having succeeded only in making herself an object of scorn.

The King was now able to pursue Athénaïs without fear of being distracted by Louise’s reproachful presence. At Avesnes Mlle de Montpensier noticed that only a short staircase separated Mme de Montespan’s room from the King’s bedchamber. At first this was guarded by a sentry but he was soon removed, making communication between the two rooms easier. The King spent a great deal of time in his bedroom and Mademoiselle noticed that Mme de Montespan was only rarely in attendance on the Queen during the day. She told Marie-Thérèse that she was exhausted and had to catch up on her sleep but, while the Queen accepted this, she expressed annoyance at seeing so little of the King. Later in the voyage she complained to him that he never came to her bedroom till four in the morning, and wanted to know what he was doing in the meantime. Louis – whose mood during these weeks was one of ‘wonderful gaiety’ – replied that he was busy reading and writing despatches, but Mademoiselle saw that as he said this he turned his face away so the Queen could not see the sly smile playing across his features.
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The Queen still had no idea that Athénaïs had become a rival. Since she was so fond of her company she was delighted when the King suggested that Mme de Montespan should join them when they travelled in a coach together, superseding ladies of higher rank. Even when she was sent an anonymous letter warning her that her husband was having an affair with Athénaïs, the Queen flatly refused to believe it. It is not known how long it took for the unpalatable truth to penetrate, but once the situation became clear to her she had no alternative but to accept it.

Perhaps her only consolation was that the same show of resignation was required from Louise. In October, after the court had returned from its travels, Louise gave birth to the King’s son, the future Comte de Vermandois. Thereafter she, the King and Athénaïs formed a curious trio. For much of the time they were inseparable: in fine weather the two ladies were regularly to be seen accompanying the King on carriage rides in the gardens of Versailles and in due course Louise and Athénaïs shared an apartment at court with every appearance of amity. The Savoyard ambassador assumed that for a time the King divided his sexual favours between the two women and at one point Saint-Maurice understood that Louise was expecting another baby. As she never actually produced another child it is not clear whether he had been right about this. However, by March 1671 even he was sure that Mme de Montespan ‘would no longer tolerate’ the King sleeping with Louise.
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Despite this, Louise remained a fixture at court, loving the King too much to summon up the resolve not to see him and thus prolonging her own agony.

If the King went on voyages during the summer, both mistresses went too. Sometimes they shared a coach with the Queen, to the amazement of watching peasants, who marvelled at the passage of ‘three queens’. If this proved an ordeal, accompanying the King in his coach was scarcely preferable, for Louis was notoriously inconsiderate to travelling companions. As Saint-Simon put it, ‘Pregnant, sick, less than six weeks after labour, otherwise indisposed, no matter, they had to be fully dressed, bejewelled, tight-laced into their bodices, ready to travel to Flanders or further … to be cheerful and good company, move about, seem not to notice heat or cold or draughts or dust, and all punctual to the moment, giving no trouble of any kind … As for the needs of nature they could not be mentioned … To feel sick was an unforgivable crime.’
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Mme de Scudery described Louise’s life at court during these years as ‘a martyrdom’ and Madame claimed that Mme de Montespan did all she could to add to Louise’s misery. ‘She used to mock at her publicly and treated her very badly,’ Madame informed a correspondent. Furthermore, she ‘made the King act in the same way’ and Louise had to endure the humiliation of watching Louis pass through her own bedroom on his way to sleep with Athénaïs.
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Madame’s allegations have to be treated with caution, but there can be no doubt that throughout this period Louise suffered terribly.

While it can be safely assumed that this bizarre ménage-à-trois imposed strains on both ladies, from the point of view of Louis and Athénaïs, Louise’s presence at court had one undeniable advantage. It distracted attention from the fact that the King’s relationship with Athénaïs, a married woman, came into the category of a ‘double adultery’, a much worse crime in the eyes of the Church than his affair with the single Louise. To complicate matters further, not only was the burden of sin greater, but the King had to deal with an angry husband intent on causing maximum disruption.

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Described as wild and witty by his cousin, Mlle de Montpensier, M. de Montespan came from Gascony, a region renowned for unruly characters. At first it had not appeared he would pose the King much of a problem. When Louis was falling in love with Athénaïs during the summer of 1667, Montespan was conveniently engaged in military service on France’s southern border, campaigning in the Roussillon against the Spanish. Precautions were taken to keep him in good humour: he was supplied with money to maintain a company of soldiers, even though in theory commanders were meant to pay these expenses themselves, and in November he was sent a letter congratulating him on the King’s behalf after he and his men were involved in a minor skirmish. When he returned to court in January 1668 it appeared he was still on good terms with his wife. In March of that year a legal document states that they were living together in rented accommodation in Paris and, before rejoining his men, he empowered her to take care of their financial affairs, which suggests there had not yet been a breakdown of trust between them.
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Montespan then went back to the Roussillon, but a few months later he applied for permission to return to Paris. This was granted without demur, but when he reappeared at court in the late summer it turned out that it had been a grave miscalculation to assume he would prove a
mari complaisant.
Although he had had amorous adventures of his own while on active service, his wife’s infidelity now roused him to fury. More than one contemporary insisted he was motivated largely by mercenary considerations and that, far from being genuinely jealous, he was merely incensed that his acquiescence so far had not been more generously rewarded.
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This may, however, have been too cynical an interpretation.

At any rate, Montespan proceeded to cause a tremendous fuss. In September 1668 he stormed to Saint-Germain and subjected the King to a vehement ‘harangue’, in the course of which he alluded to David and Bathsheba, warned Louis that he faced divine retribution and demanded that his wife be returned to him. Next he confronted the Queen’s principal lady-in-waiting, Mme de Montausier. Believing that she had encouraged and abetted his wife in her adultery, he was so grossly abusive to her that she was left in a state of complete prostration. Saint-Simon alleged that he also physically attacked Mme de Montespan and it does seem likely that he was violent towards her, either now or at some other point in their marriage, for the document formalising their subsequent separation refers to ill-treatment against her person.
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The King was not prepared to tolerate such conduct. On 22 September Montespan was arrested and sent to For l’Évêque prison in Paris. A fortnight later he was freed but ordered to withdraw to his father’s estates in Guyenne, which he was forbidden to leave without the King’s ‘express permission’. Even in rural exile, however, Montespan demonstrated a continued capacity to cause embarrassment. To show that his wife was dead to him he put his children in mourning and held a mock funeral for her. On visiting a local church he insisted on going through the main door, explaining that the side entrance was too low to accommodate his horns.
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As he had calculated, these escapades were soon the talk of Paris.

Few people had any sympathy for Montespan. When he was sent to prison Saint-Maurice reported, ‘The court and all Paris censure his conduct … Nobody pities him.’
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Nevertheless, the Marquis posed a real threat to Athénaïs and the King. As a husband Montespan had strong legal rights and since it appeared he would not passively accept being deprived of his wife the implications were alarming. Of particular concern was the fact that Montespan not only automatically gained custody of the two children he and Athénaïs had had together but he was also entitled to claim as his own any children that the King fathered on his wife. Since Athénaïs was already bearing the King’s child when Montespan was sent to prison, this was a serious matter.