Louis, upon hearing about the quarrel, took matters into his own hands. The Spanish ambassador in Paris was banished and all communication with Spain was forbidden. Louis’s ambassador in Madrid was also recalled.9 Louis then urged Charles II of England, “who had no other interest in this dispute than to prevent any sort of disturbance or agitation in his capital city,” to punish the offenders.10
This incident caused one of the few arguments between Louis and Marie-Thérèse. The queen, who was even more withdrawn than usual due to her pregnancy, raged at Louis and even took her father’s side against him. Stung to the quick, Louis threatened to have his revenge against his father-in-law and was even prepared to go to war, carrying out “to the last extreme a resentment as just as this one,” where he would “acquire honor” in placing himself at the head of his armies.11
Luckily, Philip IV of Spain was anxious to make reparation and recognize the supremacy of France. Meanwhile, Philip’s ambassadors visited Louis in his great office at the Louvre, where the papal nuncio, the ambassadors, residents, and envoys at the Court, as well as the important peoples of his state were assembled. There, having presented Louis with his credentials, the Spanish ambassador extraordinary12 told Louis that Philip of Spain had been equally displeased and surprised by the events in London. He had recalled the baron de Vatteville and dismissed him from office in order to satisfy Louis and to show him how much resentment his actions had caused. He added that Philip had ordered his ambassadors in England and elsewhere not to compete with Louis’s ambassadors and ministers in any public ceremonies that they might attend. Louis was himself very pleased to hear this declaration and professed that, “It obliged me to continue to live on good terms” with Philip.13
As though disputes of rank and position among the ambassadors were not enough, Louis also took the Venetians to task for referring to France and Spain as being delle due corone, of two crowns; Louis felt that this implied equality and put a stop to it.14
While Louis was still basking in the glow of these diplomatic victories, an event occurred that crowned everything he had achieved so far. Marie-Thérèse’s pains began, and for the next twelve hours she endured the discomfort and indignity of going through her labor in a stifling room filled with those who claimed their right to witness the royal birth. Louis had gone to confession at five o’clock that morning, receiving communion while pleading for divine protection for the queen. He went to her chamber immediately afterwards, and remained by her side throughout her labor.
The queen “was very ill at her delivery and in peril of her life,” writes Mme de Motteville, adding that she was in great pain, which distressed Louis, who was “so keenly touched with sorrow that he left no room for doubt that the love he felt for her was deeper in his heart than that for others.”15 As her pains continued, Marie-Thérèse cried out, “I don’t want to give birth, I want to die,” but then, just as midday approached, she gave birth to their first child; it was a boy, a new dauphin. The ecstatic king forgot his dignity for a moment and flung open the windows of the queen’s chamber to shout to the crowds waiting in the courtyard below, “The queen has given birth to a boy!”
Jean Loret announced the birth, which took place at Fontainebleau on November 1, in his Muze historique. He described the child as “a living masterpiece, admirably well made.”16 The new dauphin was immediately given over to the care of his governess, Julie de Montausier, who had been especially selected by Louis. As the king would write to his son, his subjects rejoiced at his birth, showing their “natural affection for their princes,” from whom they expected much.17
One of the expectations a prince was required to fulfill was to ensure his people were properly fed. While he had begun to implement measures to look after the poor, Louis now faced an even more urgent problem. The oppressive heat of the summer had been broken by violent thunderstorms that damaged crops and brought the threat of famine. Acting once again on Colbert’s advice, Louis dealt with the crisis by adopting what can only be described as socialist policies. He obliged those provinces that had produced a surplus to assist the others. He also required private individuals to open their stores and to display their wares at a fair price. He issued orders to import as much wheat as possible by sea, which was paid for from the royal treasury. The wheat was distributed free to the lower classes of the largest cities, while the rest was sold at a modest price to those who could afford to pay for it. Any profits made went immediately to relieve the poor. To those in the countryside, where it was more difficult to send the wheat, Louis sent money instead. In this way, wrote Louis, he appeared to all his subjects “like a true father of a family, who provides for his household and shares equally food to his children and to his servants.”18
Despite what Mme de Motteville believed, Louis’s thoughts remained very much with Louise. He had seen her on September 9 as soon as he arrived back from Nantes. Their reunion, however, was to be short-lived, for Henriette was eager to return home to Saint-Cloud. No matter; Louis took the opportunity to ride to Vincennes, where he made a survey of the château before moving on to inspect the works at the Louvre. He then arrived at Saint-Cloud, where he dined with Philippe and Henriette, with Louise in attendance, before arriving back at Fontainebleau in the early evening. Henriette returned to Fontainebleau shortly afterwards, and Louis, when he was not occupied with the business of government, was able to ride with Louise in the woods and at the hunt, and favor her with a stolen dance at the ball.
As winter approached, it was time to return to Paris. Henriette was among the first to leave Fontainebleau, making her way to the Tuileries, and Louise de La Vallière shared her mistress’s carriage. Just as they were leaving, Louise’s friend, the intriguing Mlle de Montalais,19 threw a packet of letters from Henriette’s lover, the comte de Guiche,20 into the coach. Montalais was acting as a go-between for Henriette and Guiche, and their surreptitious activities almost proved disastrous for Louise, who became unwittingly involved in the intrigue between the two lovers.
Louis suspected that something was going on, and he asked Louise what she knew. Louise, however, did not want to betray her friend, so she said nothing. Louis became angry, but still Louise refused to say anything. Louis stormed out, leaving Louise in despair, but she had one consolation: they had often said that should they ever argue, they would not go to sleep without writing to each other. On this occasion, however, Louis sent no word, and the tearful Louise left the Tuileries at dawn and walked all the way to Chaillot, where she knocked at the door of an obscure little convent. The nuns would not let her enter, and Louise was forced instead to stay in the outer parlor, where she sank to the floor, weeping bitterly.21
Later that morning, Louis knew nothing about his mistress’s plight. He received an ambassador from Spain, Don Christobal de Gaviria, who was taking his leave of the French court. Amid the diplomatic niceties, Louis became aware of whispering among the courtiers that Louise had fled to a convent.
Louis rushed to the Tuileries to find out what was going on, but Henriette knew no more than he did. Montalais, with a sense of guilt because she felt responsible for what had happened, told Louis that Louise had run away in despair. Louis had some idea of where he might find his mistress. Hurrying to Chaillot, his face muffled in a gray cloak, he found her still lying on the floor of the convent, heartbroken. As they sat together alone, Louise spilled out all that she had hidden from him. This, however, did not win her the king’s forgiveness; he told her only that she must return and ordered a carriage to take her home.
Louise’s troubles were still not at an end, for Philippe refused to allow her back into his wife’s household. Louis decided to appeal to Henriette, and, entering the Tuileries by a private door, he found his sister-in-law in a small room. Louis kept his head down: he did not wish her to see him, as he had been crying and his eyes were red and swollen. He implored Henriette to take Louise back, but she proved stubborn. Louis tried another avenue: he told her everything he knew about her liais
on with Guiche. Now, Henriette could be spiteful, and Louis was taking a huge risk in provoking her, but his gamble paid off. Seeing how smitten he was, Henriette’s heart softened and she relented. She agreed not only to allow Louise to return to her duties but she also promised to end her affair with Guiche.
For her part, Louise was anxious to regain the king’s confidence, but this would not be an easy task. “He could not come to terms with the fact that she was capable of concealing anything from him, and she could not bear that he was displeased with her, so that she was off her head for some time.”22 The problem lay in jealousy on Louis’s part. If Louise could hide her mistress’s affair, perhaps she could hide other things too. He had heard a story that Louise had been courted in the past by a neighbor, the young son of Jacques de Bragelongne, and now his head spun with wild imaginings. Fearing that she still loved the young man, he summoned Montalais and, with all the inquietude of a man in love, questioned her several times about the supposed affair. Montalais was able to put the king’s mind at rest. Louise had no interest in any of her past admirers, she assured him; “she thought only of being loved by the king and loving him.”23
Louis was reassured, but it would not be long before his mistress was dragged into another intrigue. As the king’s favorite, Louise held a very powerful position at court, yet her modesty and disinterestedness would not allow her to take advantage of it. This caused no end of annoyance to those around her, who viewed her as a means of access to the king. It was not long before a plot was hatched by the comtesse de Soissons, Louis’s former favorite, and the marquis de Vardes, an attractive widower with no other thoughts in his head than intrigue and mischief. Together they devised a plan to alert the as yet unaware queen of the king’s attachment to Mlle de La Vallière. This, they reasoned, would arouse the queen’s jealousy and secure Louise’s dismissal from court.
Their plan was to write an anonymous letter to Marie-Thérèse, supposedly from Spain, warning her of the king’s affection for Louise. Vardes composed the text, but as Marie-Thérèse could not yet read French very well, they looked for someone who could translate it into Spanish. As it happened, the comte de Guiche was known to be familiar with the language, and this worked out very well. Vardes was aware that Louise had spurned Guiche’s advances while the court was still at Fontainebleau during the summer, and he took advantage of this by telling the comte that Louise was trying to ruin him in the eyes of the king. The resentful Guiche readily agreed to join the plot, and he translated the letter into Spanish for them.
The letter was placed into an old Spanish envelope the comtesse had found in her mistress’s room. It was now passed through a chain of hands: a guard passed it to one of the queen’s maids, who handed it to Doña Molina, first lady of the queen’s bedchamber. Doña Molina was suspicious of the manner in which the letter had arrived. Normally, royal letters were delivered by ambassadors, while those that arrived by post were handed to the king by a functionary; they were never delivered by servants. Moreover, the letter had been folded incorrectly, and Doña Molina’s instinct told her to hand the letter to Louis, who, upon reading it, flew into a rage. He demanded to know if Marie-Thérèse had read it, and Doña Molina assured him that she had not. Louis said nothing more, but he began making inquiries into who was behind the letter. He even approached Vardes, whom he knew to be a “man of confidence and whom he trusted,” but Vardes threw suspicion on Mlle de Montpensier, “whose mind is so restless,” and the duchesse de Navailles, the head of the queen’s household, “who now stood in the king’s mind as a crazy reformer of the human species.” That lady’s close friendship with Mme de Motteville caused him to suspect her of having written the letter. “But he suspended his judgment on this for a time,” she wrote, “and his anger did not break forth upon any one. In the end, we shall see him punish, justly, the authors of this poor trick.”24
While Louis could control most things, even the ladies of the court, there was one area where his power was strictly limited. This was in matters of religion. The Catholic Church held absolute sway, even over the most absolute of monarchs. Louis, who had been brought up to be a good son of the church, knew well that God had set him above all others and, by the same token, he was answerable only to God. This was a source of great inner conflict, for the church condemned his relationship with Louise, but Louis would make his confession to Père Annat, and the sincerity with which he spoke and his promise to amend his ways ensured his absolution. At times, however, Louis would encounter preachers who could afford to be less indulgent and forgiving than his usual confessor. Such a preacher came to the Louvre to deliver a series of Lenten sermons. His name was Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet.
Bossuet was a doctor of theology at the Faculty of Paris. He was both learned and eloquent, two qualities Louis admired. In the first of his sermons, Bossuet spoke on “evil living” and urged Louis to listen to the small voice of his conscience; were he to do so, “the Divine Word will rush in, as with a scourge, breaking every idol, casting down every altar where the creature is adored.” He reminded Louis, absolute monarch though he was, that there was another kingdom above his earthly one, where “sovereigns would meet on equal terms with their subjects, who would have been changed into their companions by Heavenly Insight.”25
Bossuet warned Louis that “there is a God in Heaven who avenges the sins of the people,” but he avenged those of kings even more. “It is He who wills me to speak as I do,” Bossuet thundered, “and if Your Majesty will hear Him, He will whisper to your inmost heart those things which men dare not say to you.” Then, as though to drive the point home, he added that “our Sovereigns would justly anger the Living God if, surrounded by His benefits as they are, they should seek to taste those earthly joys which He expressly forbids them.”26
Bossuet appealed to Louis’s deep piety in an attempt to separate him from Louise, but he had words for her too. Louise, whose piety and devotion were every bit as deep and sincere as Louis’s—the lady whom Louis had considered too young to be depicted as a penitent—listened as the preacher spoke of the fall of the Magdalen and how she was saved by repentance: “Magdalen’s heart is broken, her face is suffused with shame, her mind is bent upon the true vision of her state, upon the profound realization of her danger. She is so utterly wretched that she hurries to the Physician with all her heart in her eyes; her sense of shame flings her humbly at His feet; knowledge of her danger keeps her still afraid, even after He has spoken to her; she hardly knows which to ponder most—her hope of future resistance to temptation or the joy of having been so blissfully, so mercifully, forgiven.”27 These powerful words would echo in her innermost being and haunt Louise throughout her life at court.
Louis, however, had other matters to consider. He had planned a ceremony to celebrate the birth of the dauphin the previous November, and in June he took part in the courses de bagues, a grand carousel on the square between the Tuileries and the Louvre.28 It comprised tilting at the ring, with Louis and all the court and their households dressing in spectacular costumes. In order to allow the maximum number of people to see the ceremony, Louis ordered all the participants to assemble at the Arsenal and to ride from there to the arena.
There was significant religious symbolism here. The carousel29 emulated the path of the stars, homage to the God of Light by his daughter, Circe. While Louis had portrayed Circe in a previous ballet, this time he was to be identified as the God of Light. His costume was that of a Roman emperor, his helmet adorned with tall orange and red plumes. His shield bore the image of the sun and the inscription UT VIDI VICI, ‘As I saw I conquered.’
Philippe, as the king of Persia, followed next, the moon on his shield illustrating the inscription UNO SOLI MINOR, ‘The sun alone is greater than me.’ Behind Philippe came Condé as king of the Turks. His shield bore a crescent and the words CRESCIT UT ASPICITUR. The meaning was clear: “As the crescent grows larger and brighter according to how the sun looks upon it, so the Prince who takes it for hi
s Device wishes it to be understood that, taking from the King all his grandeur and glory and all his éclat, he recognizes that his glory grows in proportion to the favorable regards that he receives from His Majesty.”30 Condé, the former frondeur, knew his only chance for glory came with service to the king. Louise appeared too, but in a small, undistinguished role.
The carousel was initially meant to be a light entertainment, but, as Louis noted, “It grew into quite a great and magnificent spectacle, be it by the number of drills, or by the novelty of the costumes or by the variety of the devices.”31 Louis was very fond of spectacular entertainments, and he was always eager to participate. He considered them to belong not so much to the king as to the court and his subjects, and they formed part of his policy of being open and approachable to all the people.32
It was then that Louis formally adopted his own personal device, “which I have kept ever since,” he writes, “and which you see in so many places,” a symbol that should “represent the duties of a prince and inspire me always to fulfill them.”33 The symbol he chose was the image of the sun, which,
according to the rules of art is the most noble of all, and which by virtue of its uniqueness, by the brilliance that surrounds it, by the light that it imparts to the other stars that make up a kind of court; by its equal and just sharing of that same light to the various regions of the world; by the good it does in all places, endlessly producing on all sides life, joy and activity; by its relentless movement, while it appears nevertheless always still; by that constant and invariable course, from which it never deviates or turns away, is assuredly the most vibrant and the most beautiful image of a great monarch.34
To this device was added the motto Nec pluribus impar, ‘Not unequal to many,’ which suggests Louis’s capacity to “rule other empires, as the sun lights other worlds equally exposed to its rays.”35
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