The Sun King (7 page)

Madame described her day as follows: she gets up at nine and goes where you can guess; then says her prayers, reads three chapters of the Bible, dresses and receives visits. At eleven, she reads and writes for an hour. After chapel comes dinner, over at about two. Then, on days when there is no hunting, she reads and writes until the King's supper at a quarter to eleven. He often doesn't appear until half past. At twelve-thirty he says goodnight. When there is a play it is given at about seven (the King grew to like the theatre less and less but Monsieur and Madame greatly enjoyed it and in the end he only had plays at Versailles when they were there). On hunting days Madame gets up at eight and goes to church at eleven.

At the beginning of Mme de Montespan's reign, she and the King received their friends at Versailles in a large and beautiful flat on the ground floor called the Appartement des Bains. It contained a sort of Turkish or Roman bath, with rooms for washing and for resting and one with a large marble basin, filled with warm water, where people, having already washed, could disport themselves. The inhabitants of Versailles were by no means as dirty as has sometimes been said, although then, as now, some people were cleaner than others. The King and his brother were almost fanatically clean in their persons; they were rubbed down with spirits every morning, before the ceremonial
lever
; and they changed their linen three times a day. Mlle de La Vallière and her daughter, too, were clean to the point of fussiness; Mme de Montespan was a grubby woman. The Queen's chief pleasure in life was long, hot baths. (The soap which they used was made at Marseilles from olive oil.) As for the château, Madame thought it rather dirty, and with such crowds milling to and fro it could hardly have been polished and shiny like some small German palace. But it is certainly not true to say that people relieved themselves on the staircase; there were privies in the courtyard where the W.C.s are now. When crowds came down from Paris for balls or fêtes there was sometimes a queue for the public conveniences and then a rich bourgeois in a hurry would pay a nobleman's servant as much as four
louis
to be conducted to his master's privy. Versailles was not unique in depending upon the chamber-pot and the
chaise percée
for all sanitation; most houses and palaces did so until the twentieth century. The present writer well remembers arriving at Buckingham Palace to be presented, in 1923, after a long, chilly wait in the Mall; and finding that the only possibility offered was a chamber-pot behind a screen in the ladies' cloakroom.

Mme de Montespan was lodged next door to the King's own flat, in rooms looking south on to the courtyard. They have been completely refashioned by subsequent occupants in the eighteenth century and are now shown as the Cabinet Doré of Mme Adélaïde and the library of Louis XVI. But the windows are the same. When Mme de Montespan and Louis XIV were known to be together behind these windows, the courtiers would do anything sooner than pass underneath them — they
called it going before the firing squad. Both she and the King frightened people; she was a tease, a mocking-bird, noted for her wonderful imitations and said to be hard-hearted. This meant that she regarded serious events with a cheerful realism; she was not sentimental. When her coach ran over a man and killed him the other women present all cried — they reproached Athénaïs for seeming unmoved. But she pointed out that they only cried because they had seen the thing happening; they never gave a thought to the men who were run over every day. She received a message from Mme de Maintenon to say that her children's house was on fire. As she was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the house was in Paris there was nothing she could do about it — she remarked that no doubt it would bring the children good luck and went on playing cards.

As for Louis XIV, it would be impossible to exaggerate the terror which he inspired, and with good reason. He had a ruthless side to his nature, especially when he was young. This came partly from lack of imagination and partly because he thought it was his duty to uphold the dignity of God's representative on earth. A poor woman once shouted crazy insults at him. Her son had been killed in an accident during the building of Versailles and people thought that when the King heard the whole story he would surely forgive her. But he had her whipped. People talked under their breath of the Man in the Iron Mask, that prisoner of quality kept in solitary confinement, of whom nobody knew either the identity or the crime. Some courtiers lost out hunting were welcomed, warmed and fed by a mysterious gentleman whose house they came upon in the forest not twenty miles from Versailles. He turned out to be an old Frondeur who had lived there peacefully ever since the rebellion, an event so remote that it seemed like history to the new generation. The King's friends thought to amuse him with this adventure; to their horror, and in spite of all their protests, the man was arrested and executed. One of Louis' small, intimate set, Lauzun, spent ten years in a fortress either for wanting to marry the Grande Mademoiselle, the King's cousin, or for going too far with his jokes — in short, for being altogether above himself.

Louis XIV took no account of feminine weaknesses. If one of his mistresses was pregnant she was told to conceal the fact; when her time came she had better have the baby quickly and silently and join the other courtiers as soon as the child had been smuggled out of sight. ‘Why so pale, Mademoiselle?' the Queen unkindly asked Louise de La Vallière, knowing quite well why. ‘Too many tuberoses and lilies in my room, Your Majesty.'

When he travelled from one of his houses to another he only took women with him in his coach — his mistress, later on his daughters or great friends. He thought if he spent several hours alone with a man he would be sure to ask some boon and embarrass the King. These journeys, except for the prestige they gave, were a real torment to his
companions. In the coldest weather all the windows had to be kept open as he could not bear stuffiness. The ladies were expected to be merry, to eat a great deal (he hated people to refuse food) and to have no physical needs which would force them to leave the coach. If by any chance they were taken ill, fainted, or felt sick, they could expect no sympathy; on the contrary, disfavour set in. One of his closest friends, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Colbert's daughter, went alone with him from Versailles to Fontainebleau, a journey which took about six hours. Hardly had they left Versailles when she was seized with a pressing and seemingly irresistible need to retire. She knew that there was nothing to be done, though every mile that went by increased her misery. About half way there the King stopped the coach and a meal was served; she ate and drank as little as she possibly could but even that little made her condition worse. She cast longing glances at a peasant's house near by but dared not go to it. They started off again. Several times she nearly fainted, but she hung on and at last they arrived. Her brother-in-law, the Duc de Beauvilliers, was waiting in the courtyard to meet them and she hissed in his ear the state she was in, saying she would never be able to get as far as her own room. He hurried her to the chapel and mounted guard while she relieved herself there.

There were few who did not tremble before Louis XIV; his sister-in-law and cousin, the first Madame, had trembled when they were boy and girl together — even the great Condé did. People who went to Court for the first time were told that it was better to get used to seeing the King before daring to address him, since the first contact with his personality often struck dumb. This terrifying side was the reverse of the medal. The King could be most human. When he gave an audience, even if it was to somebody who had displeased him, he would listen attentively and with goodness, only interrupting in order to understand the point which his interlocutor was trying to make. He was polite — perhaps the most truly polite king who ever lived. He always took off his hat to women, even to some small little housemaid, though raising it higher according to their rank. With men, the hat was brought to a fine art; for the dukes it came off though only a little, for others it was tilted, or rested a moment on his ear. If he was in his carriage and saw a priest with the viaticum he would get out, whatever the weather, and kneel on the ground. He was only seen to lose his temper to the point of physical violence three times in his long life, with Louvois, with Lauzun, when he threw his stick out of the window so as not to be tempted to strike a gentleman and, when, deeply upset at hearing of the cowardice of his son du Maine, he struck a footman for stealing a biscuit at his table. ‘This prince,' says Saint-Simon, ‘so even-tempered and so perfectly controlled, gave way on this unique occasion.' The astonishment of the bystanders spoke for itself.

Louis XIV loved a joke, and, in his dry fashion could be very witty.
The best way of getting out of a difficult situation was to make him laugh; Mme de Montespan's hold over him was partly due to her funniness. She was never frightened of him, only of losing him.

This year, 1674, Mlle de La Vallière accepted the fact that she had lost him; asked and received permission to leave the Court for good. She threw herself at the Queen's feet in public and begged forgiveness; then she entered Orders as a Carmelite. All her friends at the Court went to see her take the veil; the spectacle was touching. She said that she left the world without regret though not without pain: ‘I believe, I hope and I love.' She was only thirty; and she expiated her sin with much mortification of the flesh for another thirty-six years. So it was that she who had once been the very soul of Versailles never had a suite of rooms in the château and never saw it completed.

There was still not enough room at Versailles for all the people by whom the King would have liked to be surrounded, but at least he could now hold his Court there; the splendid suite of seven reception rooms known as the Grand Appartement was ready. The walls and ceilings, decorated by Le Brun and his pupils, are exactly as they were then, but the furniture, the hangings and curtains, of embroidered velvet in winter and flowered silk in summer, the silver candelabra and chandeliers from which flickered a hundred thousand candles, so that the whole place appeared to be on fire, have vanished; and the pictures are in the Louvre. They were: Giorgione's
Musicians
, Antonio Moro's
Portrait of a Man
, all the Leonardos of the Louvre including ‘
La femme d'un Florentin nommée Gioconde
', Andrea del Sarto's
Tobias
, Mantegna's
Virgin
, Titian's
Entombment, Last Supper, Christ and the Pilgrims at Emmaus, The Virgin and St Agnes, Portrait of a Man, Andromeda
, Veronese's
The Pilgrims at Emmaus, The Virgin, St John and St Catherine, Judith and the head of Holofernes, Flight into Egypt, Woman presenting her son to Christ, David and Bathsheba
, Guido Reni's
Labours of Hercules, Flight into Egypt, The Good Samaritan
, Guercino's
Virgin and St Peter
, Raphaël's
St John, La Belle Jardinière
, Carracci's
St Sebastian, Aeneas carrying his father
, Poussin's
Our Lady of the Columns, Rebecca at the Well
and seven others, Rubens'
La Tomi-rice, Labour of Hercules, Marie de Médicis
, Domenichino's
The Musicians
, Bassano's
Noah's Ark
.

Many of these pictures came from the collection of François I, but Louis XIV also collected. When he came to the throne, he owned about two hundred — when he died, over two thousand. He liked the Venetian and Bolognese schools — in his bedroom he had Caravaggio's
St John the Baptist
, Guido Reni's
Mary Magdalene
, a self-portrait by Van Dyck (it is still there). Domenichino's
St Cecilia
and Veronese's
St Catherine
.

The Grand Appartement was essential to the routine of Court life as planned by the King, since the whole establishment could foregather here, and did so every morning for the procession to Mass and three times a week for an evening entertainment which was called
Appartement
. The gambling, without which it would have been impossible to keep the courtiers amused and happy, took place in the Grand Appartement. Versailles was often known as ‘
ce tripot
' (gambling den) and indeed resembled a casino. The nobles played high and, unless the King happened to be in the room, when they more or less controlled themselves, those who were losing fell into audible despair; they howled, blasphemed, made dreadful faces, pulled out their hair and wept. They cheated shamelessly and were not specially blamed for doing so. Those who could remember St François de Sales said that he cheated worse than anybody in his worldly days, though in all other respects the best of fellows. The few who never lost their self control at the tables were remarkable, they included Mazarin's niece the Comtesse de Soissons, the Venetian Ambassador Giustiniani, the Marquis de Beaumont who gambled away everything he possessed at a single sitting without making any observation, and the Marquis de Dangeau, for years the best card player in France, who generally won and was never suspected of cheating. Dangeau was the author of the dullest but most reliable diary of the period; it was annotated after his death by Saint-Simon, who freely used it in the composition of his memoirs. Voltaire said it was written by Dangeau's servants, and indeed the entries are in different handwritings.

Whist had not yet been invented; ten or eleven different games were played, of a simple variety, rather like Vingt-et-un. It paid, however, to have card sense, even if but little skill was required. The Queen, who loved gambling and was as stupid at cards as she was at everything else, invariably lost. As well as cards they played Hocca, a sort of roulette at which people lost such enormous sums, and which was generally so crooked, that two Popes forbade it in the Papal States and so did La Reynie, head of the police, in Paris. To his annoyance, the King not only allowed it at the Court but even played it himself. His favourite card game was Reversi, which Napoleon also liked, but Louis preferred billiards to playing cards as it made him fidgety to sit still for any length of time. A billiard table was set up in one of the rooms (Salle de Diane) of the Grand Appartement.