The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (61 page)

To guard against fraternisation, none of the guards garrisoning the citadels were permitted to know the prisoners’ names. Louvois added it hardly needed to be said that all the women prisoners should be guarded by custodians of the same sex, to ensure they could not use feminine charms to effect an escape. Even visits from priests were severely restricted, for the prisoners were permitted only to receive Easter communion or final unction.
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There was at least one prisoner who could not accept that the situation was irretrievable. In April 1683 Lesage indicated to the governor of Besançon that he was ready to disclose some secret information relating to the King’s safety. He soon discovered that the days had passed when such contrivances could secure him more favourable treatment. On being informed, Louvois thanked the governor for bringing the matter to his attention, but remarked that this was a typical ploy from Lesage, who had ‘long plied a rogue’s trade’. Since the matter concerned the King, it could not be ignored altogether, but Louvois had no doubt that rough handling of Lesage would provide the best means of establishing the truth. If Lesage proved reluctant to elaborate, he should be put on bread and water and beaten morning and night. Louvois concluded, ‘You cannot be too harsh towards that rascal who, all the time he was at Vincennes, could never say a truthful word.’
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A few months later M. and Mme de Bachimont tried a similar ruse. They were imprisoned in St André de Salins, where they were permitted to share a cell, and in December 1683 they approached the Governor to say that they knew of a secret conspiracy against the King. The Governor sent word of this to Versailles, but the King was deeply sceptical. He commented that this was probably just ‘a device they have conceived to bring them back to Paris’. Despite this, it was deemed prudent to look into their claim. The Bachimonts were told that if they revealed all, they could rely on the King’s protection, but when the Governor interviewed them it became apparent that the whole thing had been a deception. Louvois told the Governor that the Bachimonts must ‘do penance for their imposture’, ordering him to punish them by putting them in separate cells.
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By 1688 the Bachimonts were once again sharing living quarters but they were still not reconciled to their confinement. In a vain attempt to attract sympathy, they kept shouting from the window of their cell and dropping messages scrawled on scraps of cloth. Louvois ordered the prison Governor to put an end to this insubordination by giving them nothing but bread and water for a month’.
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As the years went by, the number of prisoners dwindled. From time to time Louvois was notified that one of them was no more. Cadelan died in September 1684. Guibourg’s passing was noted in January 1686 and Bertrand followed him to the grave fifteen months later. Vanens died in December 1691 at St André de Salins.
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There is no record of the dates when some of the other prisoners died. We do not know, for example, how long Lesage survived, or if Marie Montvoisin reached old age.

A handful of prisoners outlived the King. Mme Guesdon did not die till August 1717, when she was aged seventy-seven. Out of her tiny allowance for food, she had somehow amassed savings of forty-five livres, which she left to her cell mate with a request that she prayed for her soul. ‘That’s one pensioner less for the King,’ commented the official who relayed the news to Paris. The last relic of the Affair of the Poisons was Mme Chapelain, who died in June 1724, aged sixty-eight. So much time had elapsed since her arrest that the man who notified the Minister of War of her demise was unsure of the exact reasons for her detention, though he had a vague idea that she had once been an accomplice of Mme de Brinvilliers.
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ELEVEN

CONCLUSION

Contrary to what has sometimes been asserted, it is impossible that Louis XIV could have allowed Mme de Montespan to remain at court despite having come to believe that she was a poisoner and Satanist. The King was a ruthless man. When he had deemed it necessary he had never hesitated to deal harshly with individuals who were thought to be close to him. In November 1671, for example, he had had no qualms about arresting his supposed ‘favourite’, the Comte de Lauzun, for an offence whose exact nature remains unclear. Lauzun was incarcerated in the distant fortress of Pignerol, where he remained in solitary confinement for nine years. If the King was capable of that, it is beyond belief that he would have taken no action whatever against a woman he suspected had not only plotted to kill him and Mlle de Fontanges but had also committed foul acts of sacrilege and participated in human sacrifice.

If the King had harboured such thoughts, ridding himself of Athénaïs’s presence would have presented little difficulty. Since she was the mother of six of his surviving children, imprisoning her would have been embarrassing, but she could easily have been forced to enter a convent. It could have been given out that she had done so of her own volition and, after a brief flurry of interest, this would have excited little comment. It is inconceivable that Louis would have baulked at adopting such a course had he believed her guilty of unspeakable crimes.

The King may have accepted that in 1667 Mme de Montespan had briefly been a client of la Voisin’s and that the latter had introduced her to Mariette and Lesage. If so, this was something he decided to overlook, having presumably satisfied himself that after the arrest of Mariette and Lesage in 1668 she had had no further dealings with people of that kind. On the other hand Louis may have concluded that everything Mariette and Lesage had said about her had been untrue and that he need have no worries on that score.

Exactly when the King resolved this matter to his satisfaction is hard to say. It would seem that in late February 1681, when Colbert and Duplessis wrote their memoranda in defence of Mme de Montespan, the King still needed to be convinced that Athénaïs could not have done these dreadful things. While it is unclear at what point Colbert’s arguments prevailed, it is noteworthy that on 28 March the King and Colbert both signed a document approving the foundation of a convent of Ursuline nuns, which Athénaïs had set up at her own expense. Since the document states that the King was ‘desirous to treat the said lady favourably’, this perhaps indicates that he was now persuaded of her innocence. Certainly by 17 April, when La Reynie wrote a memorandum noting that the King had decided what action to take against prisoners like Guibourg, Galet and Mme Chapelain,
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it can be assumed that Louis had also made up his mind about Mme de Montespan.

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Mme de Montespan therefore continued at court, almost certainly unaware of the manner in which she had been traduced. However, her life there was no longer enviable. It was true that Mlle de Fontanges no longer posed any kind of threat to her, but even after that poor young woman retired from court, the King showed no desire to resume a sexual relationship with Athénaïs. This was doubtless partly attributable to the fact that she was now fatter than ever: in July 1681 Mme de Maintenon informed a correspondent that Athénaïs was now an ‘astonishing’ size, ‘having grown a foot stouter since you saw her’.
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To the amazement of the court, the King did not seek a replacement for Mlle de Fontanges. He never took another mistress, ‘in spite of the advances that did not fail to be made him’. At first people remained on the lookout for the advent of a new favourite, but none appeared on the scene. In August 1681 Mme de Maintenon quashed rumours that the King had embarked on a flirtation with a young woman who had recently come to court, telling a cousin he could deny such reports ‘without fear of appearing ill-informed’.
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Mme de Montespan was still
Surintendante
of the Queen’s household, so the King’s abandonment of her did not result in a complete loss of status. She took her duties seriously and liked to think she was indispensable, boasting to her sister in 1683 that she had had the greatest difficulty persuading the King to grant her leave of absence.
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Athénaïs’s position as mother of the King’s children also earned her a measure of respect. In November 1681 her two youngest children by Louis were legitimised and brought to court, and this official recognition enhanced her own prestige.

Athénaïs still participated with apparent enjoyment in all court festivities and although she and the King were no longer lovers Louis did not ostracise her. She was invariably included in the house parties that the King gave in his newly built retreat, Marly, and, once back at court, he paid her daily visits. He went to see her immediately after attending mass and called on her again when he had finished supper. However, these visits were always brief and more than one source states that the King took care to be accompanied by courtiers so he would not have to be alone with her.
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What was most galling for Athénaïs, however, was that while the King still treated her with courtesy and consideration, it was obvious to all that he much preferred to spend time with Mme de Maintenon. Things were slightly eased by the fact that Athénaïs now saw relatively little of the former governess. In September 1681 Mme de Maintenon reported that in the last month they had encountered each other only once and on such occasions they usually managed to keep up an appearance of civility. At one point in the summer of 1681 they went for a stroll together, arm in arm and roaring with laughter. However, as Mme de Maintenon sourly commented later, this did not diminish their underlying enmity.
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In late July 1683 the Queen developed a boil in her armpit and by bleeding her repeatedly ‘the doctors … killed her as surely as if they had thrust a dagger into her heart’. Though briefly upset, the King was more shocked than truly afflicted by this unexpected event; the ironic thing was that it was Mme de Montespan who probably felt the bereavement more keenly. She had taken good care of the Queen in her final hours and though her tears when Marie-Thérèse died were presumed insincere, she had suffered a severe loss with the Queen’s passing.
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Now that she had no office in Marie-Thérèse’s household, Mme de Montespan’s presence at court was redundant and her future looked more uncertain.

Mme de Maintenon was concerned that now he could no longer sleep with the Queen, the King would be tempted to look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. Twelve days after Marie-Thérèse’s death she urged a friend to devote all her energies ‘to praying for the King: he has more need of divine grace than ever to sustain a way of life contrary to his inclinations and habits’.
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In the event the King endured no more than a brief period of celibacy. Although the exact date is unknown (the night of 9 October 1683 has been suggested or, alternatively, some time in January 1684, when mourning for the Queen officially ended), within a few months of his wife’s death the King secretly married Mme de Maintenon.

The marriage was never officially acknowledged, but gradually rumours began circulating that the King had taken her as his wife. Many people were initially inclined to dismiss the reports as ridiculous, but in time even the most sceptical observers accepted them. The German diplomat Ezechiel Spanheim professed himself mystified as to why the King had yoked himself to this forbidding woman who was some years his senior. In the end he suggested that he had done so in order ‘to mortify his senses out of penitence for his unlawful love affairs’ but, in fact, as Mme de Maintenon herself acknowledged, Louis ‘loved her as much as he was capable of loving’. The marriage did not provide her with the same degree of emotional fulfilment, but she believed she had been called upon by God to perform the valuable task of securing Louis’s salvation. While applying herself conscientiously to carrying out what she saw as her primary duty, she lamented that her destiny had prevented her from leaving a court she despised. As she herself reflected many years later, ‘God did me the favour of making me insensible to the honours which surrounded me and only feeling the subjection and constraint.’
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The extraordinary elevation of her former employee constituted a severe trial for Athénaïs. If she desired a favour from the King she now had to humble herself and approach him through Mme de Maintenon. In December 1685, for example, she wanted her son by M. de Montespan to be given a position in the Dauphin’s entourage and this was only granted after Mme de Maintenon informed the King of her wishes. Such enforced obsequiousness did not accord well with Athénaïs’s natural temperament and even when she strove to be friendly towards the former governess, people felt sure that before long she would find it impossible to keep up the effort. In 1685 Mme de Maintenon told a friend that Mme de Montespan had recently invited her to Clagny, but one of Mme de Maintenon’s servants had declared that she ‘did not think I was safe there’. This has been taken as an allusion to Mme de Montespan’s reputation as a poisoner, though it may simply have referred to the possibility that she would be seized by a fit of rage and become abusive. By this stage she was ‘so mad … when she was in a temper’ that she might even resort to violence.
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As was only to be expected, there were all too many occasions when Athénaïs’s self-control proved unable to withstand the strain and she permitted her sarcastic tongue an over-free rein. As Ezechiel Spanheim put it, ‘The jealousy of the aforesaid lady towards a person who was in every way inferior to her … and whose fortune, so to speak, she had made, could not but break out on several occasions.’ With regrettable regularity she gave vent to her mortification by letting fly with ‘pungent barbs and bitter jokes’ that subtly denigrated Mme de Maintenon and made everyone present uncomfortable.
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Mme de Maintenon seemingly shrugged off these incidents and would even repeat Mme de Montespan’s comments to amuse her friends, but despite her outward composure Athénaïs’s repeated needling left her seething. Far worse, by indulging her ill humour at Mme de Maintenon’s expense, Mme de Montespan succeeded in antagonising the King.