The Hurlyburly's Husband (5 page)

Montespan’s fusiliers fired into the sky to show their joy. Only Louis-Henri was sulking. He could have wept. All it took was for the King to show his strength on the horizon and the rebels surrendered their arms without firing a single musket. And now Montespan would have to go home without a shred of fame, more in debt than ever. What an unfortunate end to what had been a very strange war. Sometimes fate dealt one an unexpected hand.

As they returned to the capital, Louis-Henri rode for a spell alongside Maréchal Luxembourg, nicknamed the ‘Tapestry-maker of Notre-Dame’ for the great number of flags he had collected from the enemy and which he sent to decorate the cathedral. Under his arm he was carrying the flag of the Duc de Lorraine …

All the way to Paris, in every town they went through, the monarch ordered street performances – ballets, plays – which his courtiers also applauded. All the splendour of the kings of Persia could not compare with the pomp that followed Louis XIV. The streets were filled with plumes and gilded garments, raiments adorned with lace and feathers, mules with superb harnesses, and parade horses wearing caparisons woven with golden thread.

It was impossible for Louis-Henri to catch a glimpse of His Majesty, for he was surrounded by a multitude of guards, courtiers, and artists in a frenzy of genuflection. A man of forty years or so – Jean de La Fontaine – was reciting a poem that he had just composed, ‘Sonnet on the Capture of Marsal’.

‘Rever’d monarch, greatest on earth

Your illustrious name is feared by all;

Ambition’s power, in your thrall

Crumbles to less than glass or dirt.’

The fabulist seemed overcome, and spoke in a little voice, quavering and trembling with emotion. The courtiers exploded with exclamations of ‘Jesus and Mary, how beautiful, how true, how well put! Please continue, Master, we beg you!’ The poet, who drew a pension from His Majesty, needed no further urging:

‘Marsal did boast of taking you to war

But from the first bedazzling bolt of thunder

It lowered its bold brow as you drew near

And now surrenders ere you raise your fist.’

They all applauded frenetically with the tips of their powdered fingers. The inspired native of Château-Thierry continued:

‘Had its rebellious pride inspir’d your wrath

Had it found glory in extraordinary combat

How sweet ’twould then have been to sing its praises
…

But e’en now my muse begins to dread

Too rarely might your victory banner be raised

For lack of enemies who dare resist you.’

Ah … All were on the verge of swooning with ecstasy over a short person whom Montespan could not see, other than the top of a black wig bobbing with satisfaction. It must have been the monarch himself, whom Louis-Henri had imagined to be much taller, as on his paintings. At that very instant, the artist Charles Le Brun went up to the King: ‘Sire, allow me to submit to you this cartoon for a tapestry celebrating the surrender of Marsal. You see, you are portrayed here on horseback, your head in profile, at the top of the wooded plateau overlooking the plain. The Duc de Lorraine is at your feet and begs you to accept the keys to the city of Marsal, which you can see in the distance.’

Behind the picture, cautious courtiers awaited His Majesty’s remarks, to determine whether they were to continue sighing in rapture. And when the King’s calm voice, level with their shoulders, declared, ‘Monsieur, have the Gobelins weave it,’ the ducs and princes and marquis shouted themselves hoarse. ‘Ah, how lovely, how well designed!’ Louis-Henri heard the monarch calling his playwrights, musicians and sculptors to him: ‘I entrust you with the most important thing on earth: my fame.’

Once back in Paris, his horse’s tail between its hind legs, the poor disappointed Marquis de Montespan arrived at Rue Taranne. His staff (Madame Larivière and Dorothée) were waiting on the pavement to greet their master. Françoise rushed to embrace him.

‘Louis-Henri, you are alive!’

She led him back to their home with its massive, cumbersome old furnishings. The marquis told the tale of his expedition – a bottomless pit – and said, ‘And it all stopped there. ’Twas enough for the King to show his face. So here I am again, with nothing else to tell you, nothing to show you, no medal or title, more penniless than ever. Twelve thousand
livres
further in debt, lent me by my father, who in turn was forced to borrow. And did I not promise you, “Athénaïs, when I return, our finances shall be on the mend …”?’

In the dark salon, in front of the tapestry depicting Moses, Dorothée was spraying perfume using a pair of bellows, filling the room with scent, whilst Françoise sought to console her husband.

‘Louis-Henri, put your hands here.’

He placed them on her belly. His eyes opened wide. ‘Athénaïs!’

‘I went to consult a soothsayer.’

‘You believe in such folk?’

‘And you do not?’

‘I believe in you alone.’

‘It will be a boy!’

‘Marie-Christine, don’t lean towards your mother like that! You’ll fall out of your cradle and injure yourself.’

In the salon on the first floor, sitting face to face across a gaming table, the destitute young Montespans were playing reversi as they dined. Between each course Athénaïs dealt the cards with dexterity whilst Louis-Henri put his dried beans in as stakes and watched over their baby beside them.

‘She looks at you the way I gaze at you.’

‘It is true that she has your eyes, your rather big nose, and your lovely mouth. She’s the picture of her father…’

‘She’s always reaching out for you. Perhaps she would like you to nurse her.’

The marquise slipped a comforter shaped like a fleur-de-lis between her daughter’s lips; the baby immediately spat it out, and Athénaïs called out towards the stairwell, ‘Madame Larivière! Chew up some porridge for Marie-Christine – she’s hungry!’

Her husband was astonished. ‘She no longer feeds at the breast? You want to wean her so young? Is she not too small? She is not yet—’

‘It all depends on the child,’ said la Montespan, looking at her playing cards. ‘They are all different. The King, for example, nibbled his ladies heartily from infancy, for he was born, most exceptionally, with a full set of teeth. The first women he caused to suffer were his wet nurses, bruising their breasts and wounding their nipples – he had the appetite of a lion cub.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Louis-Henri, raising his wager by three pretend
écus
(three dried beans).

Wedged into a candlestick on the table, a mutton-suet candle began to smoke. The flame flickered over Athénaïs’s face, glowing on her hands as she reached out to lay down her cards. ‘Lost again. Your
écu
-beans are for me.’

The cook, Madame Larivière, came into the dark salon. She was wearing a bonnet with flaps and holding a bowl into which she spat what she had chewed up. She rolled tiny nuggets between her thumb and index finger and slipped them between the infant’s lips, whilst the marquise told a story.

‘One day, whilst you were in Lorraine, my father and brother Vivonne and I went to see the construction of the new palace at Versailles. At the ministry of war, which has already been built, my fat brother bought a military commission for the campaign against the Barbary corsairs. They will embark from Marseilles on 13 July 1664. It will be the King’s first maritime war, but he won’t go. His cousin Beaufort will be in command.’

The dinner the loving Montespans were taking on the gaming table was a charming concoction of ground meat and stew of the sort even God did not enjoy. The wine had no name, but they were not proud. Should they not drink it, since it had been opened? Louis-Henri tilted the flat-bottomed bottle with its wicker covering. The cork had been left by the cards, a piece of wood wrapped with a weave of hemp and dipped in suet. The wine flowed into Athénaïs’s glass and she pretended that she was not eager to drink.

‘Tsk-tsk, husband! Women are advised not to drink wine, because it might inflame and excite them and cause them to lose their honour!’

Madame Larivière raised her eyes to the ceiling as she left the room, whilst Dorothée came in to rock sleepy little Marie-Christine in her cradle. From the bottom of the stairs came a sudden sharp rapping. The cook, who was accustomed to this, stopped on the landing.

‘Oh, these creditors, they come every day and now in the evening …’ grumbled Louis-Henri in a hushed voice.

The Montespans heard Joseph Abraham – wigmaker and sympathetic landlord – out in the street, declaring (probably hand on heart), ‘But I swear to you that they are not home and I do not know when they will return. What? No, that cannot be a light you see in the window on the first floor. It must be the reflection of the moon against the glass.’

Athénaïs blew out the candle. In the silence and darkness, there was an unpleasant smell of mutton-suet smoke. Fine candles of pure beeswax were rare and very costly.

‘In Versailles, they burn only wax,’ murmured the marquise.

Her husband whispered, ‘I, too, will set sail, like your brother, on board one of His Majesty’s vessels. And if the King is absent, the expedition against the pirates will not be as easy as in Marsal. Athénaïs, our fortune may lie on the other side of the ocean, in the region of Algiers … The most difficult part will be to find the eighteen thousand
livres
required for the equipage.’

‘I forbid you, Louis-Henri!’ said his wife angrily, in a low voice. ‘Do you hear me? I forbid you to go off and risk your life again. I’d rather die than be three months without seeing you.’

The marquis placed his lips against hers. ‘All you need to do is go with your father to Versailles for some amusement…’

They could hear the sound of the wheels from the creditors’ carriage growing fainter down Rue Taranne, and so Marie-Christine’s mother relit the candle with an ember.

‘I met Louise de La Vallière at the new palace. You know, the King’s favourite … She found me very pretty, and has invited me to come and dance before the court in a ballet by Benserade:
Hercules in Love.
The performances will be held this autumn. And since he will not be in Algeria, perhaps the King will attend …’

She stood up and led her husband in a dance around the cradle. Dorothée went back up to the kitchen. The marquise whispered to her husband’s mouth, ‘’Tis in the dance that one appears as one truly is. In the eyes of the spectators, all your steps, all your gestures are telling, and display the good and bad with which art and nature have favoured or disgraced your person …’

But her tall marquis with his heavy wig was clumsy. He stepped on her toes, could not keep the rhythm she tried to impose. She laughed and flung her arms about him. Caressed him with her hands. Her fingers fluttered over his brow. He received caresses beyond those prescribed by conjugal duty, and received them also in the daytime, not a usual hour for husbands.

She had entwined her legs around the Gascon’s hips and, once he had pulled up Marie-Christine’s blanket, he carried his wife back to the landing, then upstairs to their bedroom. And the moon, in the little window of the stairway, could attest without lying that they loved each other. The marquis found his bounty in her pleas for more. Athénaïs was charming with her lover, probably her last, one supposed.

On their bed, they abandoned modesty and succumbed to their nature with delight. Over his wife’s body, whilst undressing her, he justified the war he had to wage.

‘His Majesty has decided to do battle with those Barbary corsairs. He’s planning a brilliant campaign. Apparently, insolent Turkish pirates, protected by the Ottoman Empire, are plying the Algerian coast, pillaging and sowing terror throughout the Mediterranean, which the King now claims to control. They attack the merchant ships, steal their cargos, reduce the Christians on board to slavery, and take the women for their harems.’

‘For their harems?! Aaah … So they become whores in the sun?’

The blonde voluptuous marquise, her hair loose, was now totally naked. Louis-Henri was surprised by an odd sphere dangling from a chain around her neck.

‘What is this?’

‘A cat’s eye worn against the chest improves vision.’

‘You believe overmuch in witchcraft.’

Her husband licked the tip of her breast, only to withdraw immediately, making a face. Athénaïs laughed at his surprise.

‘I have anointed my nipples with an extract of pulp of bitter-apple to force Marie-Christine to prefer another source of food.’

Le
Montespan caressed
la
Montespan’s breasts. Her proud globes filled his hands.

‘His Majesty’s armies must capture and fortify a little Kabyle port: Gigeri. It looks just like your belly. Behind, like your breasts, the arid peaks of the Montagne Sèche descend gently in terraces to the sea.’

Beneath his fair lady’s breastbone he drew with his thumb the round outline of her floating ribs.

‘Gigeri is at the entrance to a small but deep gulf, the Anse aux Galères.’