The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (22 page)

Whatever the truth of the matter, most people at court were sure that he and Mme de Montespan had wasted no time resuming their relationship. In late July 1675 the King was dining at Clagny when a message arrived that the great French general, Turenne, had been killed. Pious people ‘immediately attributed the bad news to the resumption of sin’. The next day eight new field marshals were created, including Mme de Montespan’s brother. His military record justified the appointment on merit, but this did not stop wags saying of the new promotions, ‘Seven had been made marshals by the sword, and one by the scabbard.’
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Nor was it surprising that it was so widely assumed that Athénaïs and Louis were again committing adultery, for the attraction between them was manifest to all. ‘The attachment is still extreme,’ Mme de Sévigné told her daughter on 31 July, although she at least was prepared to admit the possibility that, although the King was ‘doing enough to annoy the curé and everyone else’, he was not doing as much as Athénaïs would have wished.
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There can be no disputing that the King’s resistance did not last. The strength of Athénaïs’s hold over him was demonstrated in July 1676, when he returned from campaigning. He was having a reunion with the Queen and the Dauphin – whom he had not seen for weeks – when news came that Mme de Montespan had arrived back from Bourbon, where she had been taking the waters. Louis at once rushed off to see her, leaving the Queen in tears.
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It was shortly after this that Mme de Sévigné came to court and wrote her rapturous description of Athénaïs in her full glory. Within a month of the King’s return, Athénaïs had conceived another child by him.

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The King had proved incapable of giving up Athénaïs, but he did not remain faithful to her. A month after she had seen the exultant Mme de Montespan queening it at Versailles Mme de Sévigné reported, ‘Fresh blood is smelt in Quanto’s
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domain.’ The King was paying marked attention to the Princesse de Soubise, an elegant strawberry blonde in her late twenties who had been named as a possible rival to Athénaïs as early as November 1668. The following autumn she had again been linked with the King and her family were said to be very excited about her prospects. Some people were sure that she had already granted Louis the final favour, naming the time and place, but it is not clear whether their information was accurate. At any rate, at that point Athénaïs had swiftly regained her ascendancy. Despite subsisting on a rigorous diet ‘so as to preserve the brilliance and freshness of her complexion’, Mme de Soubise always lost her looks when pregnant. In the course of the next few years she had produced several children in succession and during that time had posed little threat to Mme de Montespan.
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In August 1676, however, Mme de Soubise re-emerged into the spotlight when the King’s liking for her again became apparent. It is impossible to tell whether the relationship was consummated. The German diplomat Ezechiel Spanheim was certain that as a ‘virtuous woman … who loved her husband’, she rejected Louis’s advances. Saint-Simon was equally positive that she did not. He claimed that the Maréchale de Rochefort told him that Mme de Soubise used to wait in her apartment for the royal valet, Bontemps, so that he could conduct her by back passages to his master’s bedroom, but this may not have been true.
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Certainly the Prince de Soubise evinced no jealousy of the King. Saint-Simon claimed that this was because he was devoid of honour and that he was prepared to accept ‘a humiliating and only half-concealed affront’ in the belief that this was the best way of advancing the family fortune. If so, his calculations proved correct, although Saint-Simon sniffed that the riches which subsequently accrued to him from royal largesse were ‘the fruits of discretion such as few would care to imitate’.
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Mme de Montespan was very upset by the King’s dalliance with Mme de Soubise. On 11 September Mme de Sévigné reported that Athénaïs was displaying the usual signs of jealousy – tears, affected gaiety and sulks – but that it was doubtful whether these displays of pique would be effective. Shortly afterwards Athénaïs appeared to rally, for she was at the King’s side when he appeared at the gaming tables, leaning her head ostentatiously on his shoulder. Within days, however, it seemed that she was once again in danger of being eclipsed by Mme de Soubise. As always, Mme de Sévigné’s assessment of the situation was shrewd: she remarked that even if the King’s feelings for Mme de Soubise were not very serious, ‘She is someone else and that means a lot.’ His affection for her might well prove transient but ‘she would open up the path to infidelity’ and serve as ‘a way to other women who were younger and more savoury’.
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So it proved. Before long Mme de Soubise’s attractions were diminished by the loss of a front tooth and though she remained in favour with the King his interest in her became less pronounced. By this time, however, Athénaïs was six months pregnant and so not at her best. The result was that the King looked elsewhere.

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In early 1677 Louis started an affair with Marie-Isabelle de Ludres, an unmarried girl who was an altogether more alarming rival for Athénaïs than Mme de Soubise. Now nearly thirty, she was known as Madame de Ludres on account of being a lay canoness of Poussaye Abbey in her native Lorraine. When she was no more than fifteen the Duke of Lorraine, then aged over sixty, had fallen in love with her on a visit to Poussaye. There are conflicting accounts as to what happened next. According to some sources he took her as his mistress and then grew tired of her. Alternatively, he may have tried to marry her, so alarming his family and long-established mistress that they prevailed on her parents to remove her. At any rate she moved to the French court and in 1670 became a maid of honour to Monsieur’s first wife.

Following Madame’s death on 29 June, she transferred to the Queen’s household. Before long the King was showing signs of being attracted to her, perhaps seduced in part by her distinctive lisp, which other court ladies delighted in parodying. Shortly afterwards all the Queen’s maids of honour were dismissed and replaced by married ladies-in-waiting. This was ostensibly at the wish of Marie-Thérèse, but it was generally assumed that the change had been engineered by Athénaïs. She was said to have decided that, collectively, these young women were like a hydra and no sooner had she seen off one, than another would start encroaching on her territory.
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However, Mme de Ludres did not have to leave court for in late 1671 the Duc d’Orléans had married his second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, and she invited her to become one of her maids. Having been provided with this haven, five years later Mme de Ludres became the King’s mistress.

Not long after embarking on her affair with the King, Mme de Ludres let it be understood that she was expecting his child. Her standing at court at once became higher, even though it ultimately transpired that she had mistaken her condition. As she entered a room, duchesses and princesses now rose to their feet, only sitting down when she gave the signal. Since such treatment had hitherto been reserved for Mme de Montespan, this alerted the Queen to the fact that her husband had taken a new mistress. By now she was so ‘used … to these infidelities’ that she showed little concern, remarking imperturbably that it ‘was Mme de Montespan’s business’. Athénaïs, in contrast, was roused to fury by the interloper. Her sister, Mme de Thianges, did her best to support her. At the Tuileries Primi Visconti saw her exchange ‘basilisk looks’ with Mme de Ludres and every encounter between the two ladies led to an exchange of insults.
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On 28 February 1677 the King left to join his army. While he was away Mme de Ludres went to stay at the country house of a rich financier. Mme de Montespan also retired to the country and on 4 May was delivered of another daughter, christened Françoise Marie. By the time the King returned to court at the end of May she had recovered from the birth and was ready to trounce Mme de Ludres. Though people had looked on it as a foregone conclusion that she would be discarded (the Comte de Bussy had even composed a formal letter condoling her on her fall, though in the end he thought better of sending it), it soon emerged that, now she was no longer encumbered by her pregnancy, she had not lost her ability to captivate Louis. She was aided by the fact that he had by now become somewhat irritated by Mme de Ludres’s presumptuous demands on him and the ostentatious way she flaunted their relationship. When he started treating Mme de Ludres more coldly, few people had much sympathy, for she had ‘played the sultana too much’ for their liking.
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Mme de Sévigné visited court that summer and found Mme de Montespan reinstated. ‘What a triumph at Versailles!’ she told her daughter on 9 June. ‘What redoubled pride!… What a renewal of possession.’ On paying a visit to her bedroom, Mme de Sévigné found Athénaïs looking resplendent. She was reclining on her bed, exchanging sarcastic remarks with her sister at Mme de Ludres’s expense, and Mme de Sévigné reported, ‘One breathes here nothing but prosperity and joy.’
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For the wretched Mme de Ludres the outlook was much bleaker. She had retained her position as maid of honour but that no longer gave her satisfaction. Occasionally the King still showed her some kindness but when he did so he at once incurred the wrath of Athénaïs and made her angrier still with Mme de Ludres. In June 1677 the King attempted to pay off Mme de Ludres by offering her a pension, but she rejected this, apparently still hoping that their affair had a future. The Comte de Bussy commented that if this prompted the King to return to her he would applaud her decision; if not, he would remember the maxim that honourable people often had to go without shoes.
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After a few more months of misery Mme de Ludres accepted that her position at court was intolerable and decided to enter a convent in Paris. Monsieur asked the King if he would object to her retiring there, to be met with the response, ‘Isn’t she there already?’ Once she left court Mme de Ludres was forgotten so completely that it was ‘as if she had perished in the flood’.
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In October 1680 she swallowed her pride and accepted a pension of 2000 écus. She then withdrew to a convent in Nancy, where she lived for many years.

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Athénaïs’s victory had been convincing but it did not make her secure. Her hold over the King had been revealed as precarious and she now lived in perpetual fear that he would take another lover. The Comte de Bussy remarked that such uncertainty was a worse torment than actually losing the King and her temper became more volatile under the strain. Throughout the autumn of 1677 Louis kept flirting with other ladies, provoking an outburst of ‘pure jealousy’ from Mme de Montespan.
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In early 1678, despite being heavily pregnant, she accompanied the King on the final campaign of the Dutch War. The conditions were particularly gruelling: the ladies often had to sleep in their carriages, which kept getting bogged down in the mud, and at one point Athénaïs went down with a fever. She had put on so much weight during the pregnancy that she was no longer fit enough to endure such rigours and she was clearly very relieved to return to court after the war ended.
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In early May Mme de Montmorency reported that Athénaïs’s downfall was considered imminent, although for the moment the King clung to her purely out of habit. Since she was ‘in no state to serve the King’, Athénaïs withdrew to the country to await the birth of her baby and Louis did not seem sorry to see her go.
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On 6 June 1678 she was delivered of a son, who was subsequently created Comte de Toulouse. This was her last child by the King (she had borne him seven in all, of whom four survived to adulthood) and some people maintained that after this point he never slept with her again.

Certainly, her looks were not what they were, for after this birth, she did not regain her figure. On one occasion Primi Visconti saw her getting out of her carriage and was shocked by how ungainly she had become. Having caught a glimpse of her thigh, he claimed that it was the same size as his waist though, ‘to be fair’, he admitted he was now very slim. Perhaps in the hope of being pummelled into shape, Athénaïs had daily massages during which she was rubbed with scented pomades, but unfortunately the King was allergic to perfume and found the smell offensive. After her return to court it was noted that he now seemed reluctant to take her in his carriage.
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It was therefore not surprising that when there appeared at court ‘a beauty far superior to any that had been seen for a long time at Versailles’, the King proved highly susceptible. She came from the Auvergne and was the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Comte de Roussille. Her name was Marie-Angélique de Scorailles, though she was known as Mlle de Fontanges. She had blond hair with a slightly reddish tinge and was lovely ‘from head to foot’, according to Madame, who took her on as a maid of honour in October 1678. Though she was neither intelligent nor amusing – in the Abbé Choisy’s words, she was ‘beautiful as an angel, stupid as a mule’ – her physical attractions sufficed to enrapture the King.
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Mlle de Fontanges had probably become the King’s mistress by early 1679 but Athénaïs did not at once realise that she had acquired a rival. At the time her energies were being absorbed by frantic gambling, for every day she hazarded grotesque amounts at
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It was usual for her to lose 100,000 écus a night, though on Christmas Day 1678 her losses amounted to seven times that. Mme de Montmorency mistakenly thought that the King’s readiness to countenance her running up such debts showed that she was higher in favour than ever, when the real reason for his forbearance was that he welcomed the fact that her obsession distracted her from monitoring his activities.
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