The Sun King (5 page)

‘You know,' the King once said to his sister-in-law, ‘I like clever, amusing people' (
les gens d'esprit
). This was true of him all his life. Nobody could have been cleverer and more amusing than Athénaïs de Montespan and the other members of the Mortemart family. She, her two sisters and their brother were always together; they were extremely brilliant. They had a way of talking which has unfortunately never been precisely described but which people found irresistible. Their lazy, languishing, wailing voices would build up an episode, piling unexpected exaggerations upon comic images until the listeners were helpless with laughter. Among themselves they used a private language. They were malicious, but good-natured; they never really harmed anybody; they liked laughing and had the precious gift of making other people sparkle.

Mme de Montespan was christened Françoise but, rightly, considered that the name did not suit her and changed it to Athénaïs. She first came to the Court in 1660, the year of the King's marriage, and was maid of honour to his sister-in-law, the first Madame. Nearly all his women originated in the household of his brother's wives, so that this came to be known as ‘the nursery garden of the mistresses'. Three years later she married Montespan, but she always had her eye on the King and must have found it hard to bear that he should have picked another flower, Mlle de La Vallière, out of the same garden. Athénaïs cleverly courted Louise and became her greatest friend so that she saw the King every day. But years went by and she got no further with him. At last she felt the need of a little supernatural assistance. She firmly believed in God, was in fact very devout, but unfortunately it is against the rules to ask Him to give one the chance of committing double adultery. So she went to consult the fashionable fortune-teller, Mme Voisin; what happened between the two women is not known for certain but the present writer believes it to have been more or less as described in the following pages.

Mme Voisin, whose kind, motherly face in her portrait by Le Brun shakes one's faith in the art of physiognomy, did not live in some sordid back alley. She was a comfortable bourgeoise and had a villa in its own grounds near Saint-Denis, where she gave elegant parties to the music of resident violinists. She had friends in many walks of life; minor
noblemen and the public executioner were among her lovers; her daughter's godmother was the respectable Mme de La Roche Guyon. She gave excellent advice to her clients and did what she could to help them, catering for little feminine desires such as larger breasts and smaller mouths, white hands and luck at cards. When unwanted babies were on the way she was very understanding. If wishes concerned an inheritance there were certain powders; for unrequited love, various forms of magic. No doubt she began by advising Mme de Montespan, by talking over the situation — and who, longing to be loved, can have enough of such talks and such advice? But nothing happened; the King remained indifferent. At last Mme Voisin said they had better try spells. Unfortunately any really efficacious spells entailed calling in Satan, with the attendant risk of hellfire. In those days faith, which was general, included belief in the Devil. There he was, just round the corner, with his horns and his tail and his dreadful fascination, waiting to pounce. If God refused a prayer, Satan might well grant it, though at the price of eternal flames. Athénaïs, young and healthy and with all her life before her was not, yet, unduly preoccupied by the next world: her thoughts were centred on this one. In 1667 she had been married for four years and had two children; the time had come to realize her ambitions.

Mme Voisin knew a priest who was willing to help. He read the Gospel over Mme de Montespan's head; there was some nonsense with pigeons' hearts under a consecrated chalice; and she prayed: ‘Please let the King love me. Let Monseigneur le Dauphin be my friend and may this love and this friendship last. Please make the Queen sterile; let the King leave La Vallière and never look at her again; let the Queen be repudiated and the King marry me'. It was all rather harmless and undeniably successful. The King seemed to become aware of Athénaïs for the first time. He went off to besiege Lille (June 1667), taking her in the capacity of lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Louise de La Vallière was not invited. In despair she followed the royal party and caught up with it as the camp was being pitched. When she came face to face with the King he put on a terrifying manner and said: ‘Madame, I don't like having my hand forced.' She had to go away again, deeply humiliated. During this campaign Mme de Montespan became his mistress. Her sacrilegious prayer seemed well on the way to being answered. The King loved her now; so did the Dauphin, aged eight (and his affection never changed). The King's looks in the direction of La Vallière were getting fewer and colder, though this did not prevent him from giving her another baby as a parting present. The Queen was far from sterile; she had six children, but all except the Dauphin were dead by 1672, two as infants and the other three at a few years old. They were murdered, not by Mme de Montespan's spells but by the Court doctors. As for the King's remarriage, the time for that was not yet.

So the
Divertissement
of 1668 to usher out the old Versailles ushered in a new mistress, but the King had to be careful that this should not
be too apparent. In the eyes of the Church and of his subjects, double adultery was a far greater sin than a love affair with an unmarried woman. Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan, was not only a wife but a mother; furthermore M. de Montespan, unlike the usual run of men whose wives were honoured by the King and who built up enormous fortunes on this favour, minded. He made a song and dance. He boxed his wife's ears; when he was with the King he talked loudly about David and Bathsheba; he drove to Saint-Germain-en-Laye with a pair of horns wobbling about on the roof of his coach and there took leave of his friends and relations. Then he went into mourning and referred to the Marquise as his late wife. The King, who very much disliked being embarrassed, was furious; but Mme de Montespan only laughed and said scornfully that her husband and her parrot seemed to amuse
la canaille
about equally.

Montespan's uncle was the Archbishop of Sens; he took his nephew's side. He found a married woman, in his bishopric, who was living in open sin with another woman's husband and made her do public penitence. He put up notices in all his parishes drawing attention to the laws on adultery. The French bourgeoisie was made aware, by these and other means, of what was happening; it was shocked. However the King had his own way. He forced the Paris Parlement to sanction a deed of separation solicited by Mme de Montespan; finally, as scandals do, the scandal lost its interest and everybody got used to the situation. But at first there were some nervous moments. The lovers were driven to pretending that the King was still attached to Louise de La Vallière while Mme de Montespan was in full fling with the Comte de Lauzun. Lauzun was the great amuser of the King's little set; he and the Marquise played their parts with enthusiasm; but Louise suffered. The others really could not see why; she was a rich duchess; Mme de Montespan was adorable to her, walked arm-in-arm with her and turned on full charm. For some reason none of this made up to Louise for the King passing through her room to find his new love and throwing her his little dog as he went. In 1671 she could bear it no more; she fled to Chaillot, the famous convent where the Palais de Chaillot now stands, and wrote to the King to say that, having given him her youth she wished to sacrifice the rest of her life to God. The King cried. He sent Colbert, bearing vague threats to the Mother Superior of what might happen to Chaillot if the nuns kept Mlle de La Vallière there. She was returned to Saint-Germain. Louis was alone with her for an hour and then, both crying, they went to see Mme de Montespan who was in floods of tears; she held out her arms, Louise fell into them and there was a total reconciliation all round. After this she stayed on, in good odour with the King and seeming much happier. Mme de Sévigné describes her at a Court ball with her beautiful little girl Marie-Anne, aged six, dressed in black velvet. Mme de Sévigné noticed that they called each other ‘Mademoiselle' and ‘Belle Madame'.

Mme de Montespan, who was a prolific woman, was soon expecting a baby. (She had, in all, nine.) The King, by now very much in love, looked forward to having a child of hers but feared that Montespan, the legal father, might claim it as his own. That would have been a pretty revenge exactly in the style of the Marquis. So Mme de Montespan concealed her condition as best she could and the lovers decided that some safe, reliable woman must be found who would take the infant at birth and look after it secretly. Mme de Montespan knew the very person, her own greatest friend, a poor, pretty, well-born widow of thirty-four, noted for her piety, who was in difficult circumstances and lodging in a Paris convent — that same Mme Scarron who had been with Athénaïs at the
Divertissement
. The King was not in favour of the idea. He did not like Mme Scarron; he thought she was a blue-stocking and he always sensed disapproval when she was there. Also he hated her friends. Nor did she show much enthusiasm for the job. She was proud, concerned with her own reputation and though by no means averse to a foothold at Court she only wanted it on regular terms. Underhand transactions involving new-born bastards did not appeal to her at all. At the same time she desperately needed both the money and the security which were offered to her. Mme de Montespan in such a dilemma might have gone to a fortune-teller; Mme Scarron went to her confessor. He said that if the King himself asked her to take the child she could not very well refuse. And so it was. The King pocketed his prejudice and she her pride.

A house was bought in what was then a remote suburb between Paris and Vaugirard (it still exists, No. 25 Boulevard du Montparnasse, buried in other houses and shops but of recognizably beautiful architecture). It was furnished; servants were engaged and Mme Scarron moved there from her convent. When the child, a girl, was born, Lauzun, in a cloak-and-dagger scene which he and Mme de Montespan must greatly have enjoyed, smuggled it out of Saint-Germain and handed it to Mme Scarron who sat waiting in a hackney cab. The baby was then settled into its secret nursery. In a very short time a little brother appeared, the future Duc du Maine. Mme Scarron loved children; they brought out the best in her curious nature; and she was an ideal governess. To her despair, the girl soon died. In those days most people took the death of an infant very lightly, especially if it was a female — not so Mme Scarron. The King was more moved by her grief than by his own loss and thereafter he liked her better.

While looking after the children Mme Scarron was able to go out in Paris society, as she had always done from her convent. She was a brilliant member of the brilliant circle presided over by the Comtesse de Lafayette and the Marquise de Sévigné. These famous writers were rather cut off from Court life; they were real Parisians, many of their friends had been compromised in the Fronde; and both of them had been intimate with Fouquet. The King looked upon the whole set with
no good eye, though he thought them more tiresome than dangerous. It would not be true to say that they were satisfied with this state of affairs; they might have congratulated themselves on having escaped from the Court and its futilities but in fact they hankered after it.

Mme Scarron often dined with these friends and sometimes they would take her home as far as the park gate of the mysterious house where she was now living. No doubt they knew perfectly well why all of a sudden the poor widow had a house, a coach and servants of her own; why her plain, almost nun-like, though elegant gowns, in the dark colours she always affected, were now of the finest cloth and embroidered with real gold thread. Mme de Sévigné tells all this in her letters but without any explanation. Better not to write such things since the mail was apt to be read by the police. Presently Mme Scarron began to amuse her friends with tales of that ‘village she knows so well' (the Court); the tempers of Lauzun; the grief and woe and appalling boredom that often assailed the women there, ‘from which she who is most to be envied is by no means immune'.

In 1673 the King went to the front with Mme de Montespan, heavily pregnant, Louise de La Vallière and the Queen, all lumbering after the army in the same coach, so that the peasants, amazed, used to tell how they had seen three Queens of France. It cannot have been a very cheerful trio; Marie-Thérèse, mad with jealousy, had vapours most of the time. Mme Scarron and the little boy were also of the party. Athénaïs had her new baby at Tournai and was obliged to be up and about two days later.

When the campaign was over the King thought it would be safe to recognize his two children. He gave them the titles of Duc du Maine and Comte de Vexin and took them to live with him. Mme Scarron came too.

Mme de Montespan was establishing her empire. At Clagny, a stone's throw from Versailles, the King built a house for his love. Unfortunately it was not large or grand enough to please her. She said scornfully that it was the sort of thing one gave to opera singers, so it was pulled down and a new young architect called Mansart, a protégé of Colbert's, designed a château on a more suitable scale. ‘Armide's palace,' said Mme de Sévigné, after having visited it, ‘the house is getting on fast, the garden is ready. You know Le Nôtre — he has left a little, dark wood which makes a perfect effect; there's a forest of orange trees in large tubs — then, to hide the tubs, on both sides of them there are palissades covered with tuberoses, roses, jasmine and carnations; a beautiful, surprising, enchanting idea — everybody loves this spot.'