The Sun King (6 page)

Athénaïs's family shared in her glory. Her brother, the Duc de Vivonne, was made Captain-General of the Galleys and Governor of Champagne and the Duc de Mortemart, her father, Governor of Paris.

Her sisters were the Marquise de Thianges, the eldest, and Mme de Fontevrault the youngest of the family; there was a fourth, a nun at
Chaillot, but she had a true vocation and never appeared at Court. Mme de Thianges regarded herself as nature's masterpiece. Her husband bored her and she left him in order to join forces with Mme de Montespan, falling into bed with the King from time to time. She was a tremendous snob; two French families alone counted in her eyes, the Mortemarts and the Rochechouarts — the latter only because of their many marriages with Mortemarts. She used to make the King laugh by telling him that the Bourbons were decidely
parvenus
. At parties Mme de Thianges would group all her relations together to show how wonderful they were and how superior to everybody else.

Mme de Fontevrault was the most beautiful and cleverest of the sisters. She was a nun without a vocation; the King made her abbess of the important convent of Fontevrault, where she ruled over both nuns and monks. He loved her company but she would never go to his parties, although she always saw him when she visited Athénaïs. She was a good nun, an excellent abbess and a learned woman; in her spare time she translated Plato. Like the rest of the family she loved a joke. When she was in Paris she used to take Mme de Montespan to hear the sermons of a certain Jesuit who was the double of the Duc de Vivonne. It made them shriek with laughter to see what seemed to be their naughty brother, dressed in a soutane, delivering himself of holy thoughts and priestly gestures.

Abbé Testu used to say of these sisters, ‘Mme de Thianges talks like a woman who reads, Mme de Montespan like a woman who dreams and Mme de Fontevrault like a woman who talks'.

Mme de Montespan arranged for her penniless pious young niece, Mlle de Thianges, to marry one of Mazarin's nephews, the Duc de Nevers, who, according to Mme de Sévigné, always had his hands in unexpected places. He practised the ‘Italian vice' (sodomy) and is said to have corrupted Monsieur, the King's brother. When he was young he was put into prison for baptizing a pig. Now the King gave him so many lucrative jobs that it was as though he had married a huge heiress. This marriage most unexpectedly turned out to be a happy one.

Mme de Montespan and Mme de Thianges obtained a percentage on the meat and tobacco sold in Paris, and numerous other benefits with which they were to make their fortunes. All the same, Mme de Montespan had some pride — she never would take jewels from the King. May this have been because the ones he lent her were even larger and finer than any he would have given away?

In 1674 the King began going to Versailles for prolonged visits; the enlarged house was more or less habitable and he was able to take his family, some of the courtiers and the government officials. The ministers now had lodgings of their own so that they could bring the archives, many waggon-loads of them, as they always had to do when the Court went for the annual visit to Fontainebleau, and work there properly. Louis XIV, his wife and his mistress were comfortably lodged at last. He lived on the first floor of the old château, behind the windows of his father's rooms which faced both east and west, since the Galerie des Glaces had not yet shut up the western wall. His private sitting-rooms were at a right angle to his bedroom, facing south over the Cour de Marbre. This courtyard was the business side of the château, the scene of comings and goings; all the kings who lived at Versailles liked to keep an eye on it; Louis XV had a secret window through which he could see and not be seen; Louis XVI went so far as to set up a telescope. The Cour de Marbre was sometimes called the Cour du Louvre because it was only available to those who had the privilege of bringing their coaches into the great square courtyard of the Louvre — princes, dukes, marshals of France and ambassadors.

The Queen's rooms, also on the first floor, were in the southern part of the ‘envelope' or new building and the beautiful ‘Queen's staircase' led to them. Her bedroom and drawing-rooms looked across the Orangery and Pièce d'Eau des Suisses up to the wooded heights of Satory. Here she herself died and so did one other Queen, Marie Leczinska, and two Dauphines, and here nineteen royal children were born. Versailles was fated never to have a queen who could sustain the rôle as envisaged by Louis XIV; there was never to be another Anne of Austria. He wanted somebody who would not only shine in society, with infinite politeness, and ornament the royal pageant, but also rule over the courtiers and take an interest in their human problems. Marie-Thérèse knew very well how to behave at ceremonies and if her husband had no reason to be proud of her, he had no reason to be ashamed either. But she had the mentality of a child, liked to play with little dogs and half-mad dwarfs and never learnt to speak French properly; she made no impact on her subjects. In spite of a pretty face she was not
attractive; she had short legs and black teeth from eating too much chocolate and garlic. The King was fond of her and treated her in a fatherly way; and she worshipped him, though she avoided being left alone with him, it embarrassed her. One kind look from him made her happy all day. She believed everything he told her and the courtiers knew that she always repeated things to him. She suffered agonies of jealousy. At the beginning of the King's affair with Louise de La Vallière she had tried to assert herself by refusing to sleep with him. This was a very bad idea; it alienated him completely — months, and the intervention of the Queen Mother, were needed before their relationship became normal once more. ‘The Lady of the Manor' as Mme de Sévigné called her, never tried that again. According to various contemporaries, the King and Queen had a black daughter who was kept in a convent near Melun. Certainly a little ‘Moor' existed there and was regularly visited by the Queen and women of the royal family when the Court was at Fontainebleau. Whether she was really the daughter of Marie-Thérèse and Louis XIV will probably never be known.

The King's brother, the Duc d'Orléans, always known as Monsieur, had temporary rooms in the château of 1674 and a much grander suite when Versailles became even bigger. Until the Dauphin grew up Monsieur was the most important person at the Court. Louis was devoted to him though he regarded him as a joke and sometimes as a bad joke at that. Physically he was a caricature of his brother, three-quarters his height and more oriental-looking, swarthy, with eyes like black currants. In spite of being one of history's most famous sodomites, Monsieur had two wives, a mistress and eleven legitimate children of whom seven died in infancy or were born dead; and he is the ‘grandfather of Europe'. Every Roman Catholic royal family has him among its ancestors; all the kings of France after Louis XIV, as well as Marie-Antoinette and the son of Napoleon descend from him. He modelled himself on the exquisite Henri III, even to the point of being devout, though this also came from his love of ceremony. Carefully brought up by Mazarin and Anne of Austria in total ignorance of public affairs, so that he should not embarrass his brother with political ambitions, his interests in life were clothes and jewels, parties, etiquette (on which he was sound), objects of art and boys. He loved his château at Saint-Cloud, which was perhaps the most attractive of all the royal country residences; the King also gave him Richelieu's town house, the Palais-Royal.

In his youth Monsieur was partial to battles. He would arrive rather late on the field, having got himself up to kill; painted, powdered, all his eyelashes stuck together; covered with ribbons and diamonds — hatless. He never would wear a hat for fear of flattening his wig. Once in action he was as brave as a lion, only afraid of what the sun and dust might do to his complexion; and he proved an excellent strategist. But he soon found warfare too fatiguing; he was the only member of his
family not to require violent exercise; he never went out hunting and seldom put his nose out of doors if he could help it.

Monsieur could be amusing — he was a chatterbox and at family gatherings his was the voice mostly heard. Louis, who had no small talk, said he was glad of it when he thought of the rivers of nonsense spouted by his brother. He treated the King with an infinitely respectful familiarity; he knew his place and stayed in it; the King responded affectionately but with more than a hint of condescension: ‘Now we are going to work; go and amuse yourself, Brother.' He always called him ‘Mon Frère' — Monsieur called the King ‘Monsieur'. Sometimes the two of them would quarrel, that is to say Monsieur, who was extremely touchy, would behave rather like a Pomeranian yapping at a lion, for their set-tos were always of his making. This sort of thing was typical: a gentleman of his household, M. de Flamarens, offended Monsieur in some way and he dismissed him on a slender pretext. (The little court at Saint-Cloud is described by contemporaries as ‘stormy'.) Soon afterwards Flamarens appeared at one of the King's evening parties. Monsieur, shaking with anger, went to the King and said ‘Monsieur, Flamarens is being disrespectful to me. I did not forbid him your house as I know it would not be in order for me to do so, but I forbade him to appear before me and I find it very strange and insolent that he should be here.' ‘But, Brother,' said the King, ‘it's not my fault!' Monsieur then became so furious that the King said they had better talk about it when he was calmer; but the subject was never raised again and Flamarens continued to appear at Court.

Monsieur's first wife was his cousin Henrietta of England, much loved by all except him. She was the subject of Bossuet's sermon, delivered to a loudly sobbing Court: ‘Madame se meurt; Madame est morte—(1670). It was freely said in England that Madame was dead because she was poisoned by Monsieur's two minions, the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d'Effiat, and that her husband was an accessory before the fact; but nobody who knew the little man believed this. Very probably she was not murdered at all. Her health had always been bad; all her eight children but two were still-born, one of them quite rotten, or died immediately; she was opened after her death and found to have an abscess on her liver. Be it as it may, Monsieur was ruled by Lorraine and d'Effiat to the end of his life. The King himself, who hated sodomites as a rule, was partial to the Chevalier de Lorraine, beautiful to look at and an amusing scoundrel.

After a year of freedom, Monsieur married again, another close relation of the English royal family, Princess Elizabeth-Charlotte (Liselotte) of the Palatinate. She was a Protestant and had to be converted to Roman Catholicism in order to marry a French prince; as a result she lost her claim, which was better than that of George I, to the throne of England. She did not mind at all — she disliked the English if possible even more than she did the French and became a good Catholic,
although retaining a certain Protestant manner during her devotions. She found the French Catholics less bigoted than the Germans! ‘Whoever wishes may read the Holy Scriptures and one is not obliged to believe in nonsense and stupid miracles. The Pope is not adored here and no value is set on pilgrimages and such things.'

Madame the second was a great blonde Teutonic tomboy; delicate little Monsieur seemed to be his wife's wife. When he first saw her he told his friends, despairingly, that he would never be able to manage. However, by dint of hanging holy medals in a certain place, rather impeding any pleasure Madame might have felt, he did manage and they had three children. After that, by mutual consent, they slept in different beds. He liked Liselotte better than Henrietta, who was an intriguer and, he thought, might have had lovers. The courtiers noticed that the King too seemed fonder of her. Their short flirtation over, he had never paid much attention to Henrietta. Liselotte had one great advantage in her husband's eyes: she did not care for diamonds, so that he was able to plaster his own clothes with all he had. Somebody asked their little boy, the Duc de Chartres, if he was fond of dressing up: ‘I like it better than Madame does, but not as much as Monsieur.' She never bothered about clothes; she only had full dress gowns and riding habits.

Madame adored hunting; she rode hard, eight hours on end, looking like an enormous policeman, until well over sixty. She was fond of animals and had many pets; little dogs and a tame duck; she hoped they had immortal souls, while doubting whether anybody had. She also collected medals and geological specimens. The rest of her time was spent in a small room lined with portraits of German princes, writing letters — at least thirty pages every day to various royal relations all over Europe, including Henrietta's two daughters, the Duchess of Savoy and the Queen of Spain, whom she loved like younger sisters. She is one of the best sources of information about Versailles, but her letters, entertaining as they are, are not quite reliable. Like Saint-Simon, who arrived at the Court twenty-three years later than she did, she was full of prejudices and was inclined to invent all sorts of lies with which to justify them. She complained bitterly about the French! ‘People only have to marry in France and the desire to laugh will leave them.' But she liked Versailles; she said it was so comfortable having everything under the same roof and the hunting at one's door. She hated Paris.

Madame knew quite well that her letters were opened by the King's police and often read by him — she used them in the rashest way, to let off steam or tell home truths as she never would have dared to his face. She was obsessed by him; probably in love with him. Monsieur and Madame were both very fond of Mme de Montespan. Madame does not seem to have been jealous of her, as she was of the King's later attachment. She was already established as mistress before Madame arrived in France, besides which Athénaïs got on with everybody.