The Sun King

by Nancy Mitford

  Soon after his wife’s death, the Dauphin fell in love with one of the Princesse de Conti’s ladies, called Mlle de Choin. Ugly, like all his women, she was a fat, squashy girl with a snub nose, an enormous mouth and huge breasts on which he would beat a tattoo with his fingers. She became mixed up in the intrigues which always surrounded him, since nobody could forget that from one day to another he might be the King of France. At this time, Marie-Anne de Conti was rather in love with a good-looking member of the Duc de Luxembourg’s staff called M. de Clermont. Luxembourg, always full of schemes, suggested to Clermont that if he married Mlle de Choin they could rule the Dauphin between them; so Clermont, in the best traditions of French classical comedy, proceeded to court both mistress and maid. While this was going on he left for the front. Marie-Anne was certainly unlucky where the post was concerned: Clermont’s mail was opened and given to the King; it contained the love letters of this three-cornered affair. The King sent for the Princess who arrived trembling as all his children did, except du Maine, when summoned to the dread presence; he then read out Clermont’s letters to Mlle de Choin. Marie-Anne fainted away. He revived her and made her read out loud her own letters to Clermont. After that, and having pulled her out of another fainting fit, he spoke rather kindly to her and sent her off in a tremendous rage. She dismissed Mlle de Choin; but the Dauphin went on seeing her and eventually married her. He did so for exactly the same reasons as those for which his father had married Mme de Maintenon. As in their case, total secrecy was observed; no details of the ceremony are known, but a letter from the Dauphin to Mme de Maintenon (19 July 1694) leaves no doubt that it took place. ‘I was amazed that you spoke to me of my wife — amazed and taken aback. I am delighted that I am in favour; my only thought is how to please the King.’ Mlle de Choin behaved well, living very quietly at Meudon and never putting herself forward. Clermont, many years later, married the Dowager Countess of Jersey, widow of the English ambassador to Paris.

  Athénaïs de Montespan’s daughters were much more amusing than the Princesse de Conti. The frivolous Mortemart strain was powerful and came out in her children. In 1685 her eldest daughter married M. le Duc (de Bourbon), grandson and heir of the Grand Condé. She was thereafter known at Versailles as Mme la Duchesse. Some people thought it strange that the rich, powerful, famous Condé should allow his heir to marry a bastard. But Condé’s life was complicated by the part he had played in the Fronde, when he had fought against the Queen Mother and Mazarin. He was ashamed, now, of his behaviour and was for ever trying to make amends to his cousin the King whom he both loved and feared. The bride was only twelve and Mme de Montespan showed her hard heart with a vengeance on this occasion, insisting that she should be put to bed at once with her seventeen-year-old husband, for fear that otherwise he might have second thoughts and seek an annulment of the marriage. The King was more humane and would not allow it. M. le Duc was intelligent and well-educated but most unattractive; large for a pigmy, small for a man, with a bright yellow face and a head too big for his body. His appearance was thought to be due to his mother’s having intercepted a sexy look from her dwarf when she was pregnant; but his sisters were little black beetles, and the Condé family was to be strange, physically and mentally, for several generations.

  Mme la Duchesse was a darling. Her plump little body could not compete with that of the swan-like Princesse de Conti for beauty, but she had the face of a real love child. Madame said of her (and Madame hated bastards) ‘She ridicules everything in such a droll manner that one can’t help laughing . . . in all her life she has never had a bad-tempered moment’. This may have been due to the fact that she always had the best food in France. The Grand Condé was subjugated by her and she adored him; they were a touching pair, never apart. The year after her marriage she caught smallpox while the Court was at Fontainebleau. Condé nursed her devotedly and stayed with her there after everybody else had left for Versailles. She recovered; but he had worn himself out; this great captain suddenly died, at the age of sixty-five, as the result of his fond attachment to a little girl of thirteen. On his death bed he wrote a letter to the King, begging him to take the Prince de Conti back into favour.

  After all the services Condé had rendered him, the King could not do otherwise and Conti reappeared at Versailles. He and Mme la Duchesse were in love and their liaison, though it did not prevent Conti from loving his pages as well, was cloudlessly happy and romantic and lasted until death parted them, many years later. The affair was conducted with the greatest discretion; their only confidants and go-betweens were the Dauphin and Marie-Anne de Conti. For twenty years Conti never visited Mme la Duchesse in her own flat; when he was ill or absent she never asked for news of him. M. le Duc was dangerously jealous, not only of his wife’s love for Conti but of his brother-in-law’s irresistible charm, ever before his eyes, and of the fact that the Grand Condé had been so fond of him. However, Mme la Duchesse was always on the best of terms with her husband, as was Conti with his wife; M. le Duc and his sister, the Princesse de Conti were thus kept under control.

  Conti became more popular every year; he was adored by the Parisians — his town house was where the Monnaie is now — and by the army. It was more and more obvious that he must play a great part as soon as the Dauphin became King. Meanwhile the Duc du Maine was showing himself to be a figure of cardboard. Louis XIV’s dislike of his cousin grew. In 1696 he saw a chance of getting rid of him at which he eagerly snatched. The throne of Poland fell vacant; it was offered to Conti by a section of the Polish aristocracy and accepted for him by the King. Never has a prospective monarch been more reluctant. Like most Frenchmen, Conti loathed the idea of living anywhere but in France; in spite of the King’s unkindness, his eventual prospects were brilliant; but above all it would break his heart to leave Mme la Duchesse. However, the King would not hear of a refusal and Conti was obliged to do as he was told. He begged the King not to publish the news and not to treat the Princesse de Conti as a queen until he had been to Poland and found out how the land lay. To no avail. ‘Here we have the King of Poland!’

  Louis XIV greatly enjoyed the farcical pretence that he was conferring a benefit on his dear cousin. The dear cousin was obliged to play the game. There were sad scenes of adieu — heartrending in the case of Mme la Duchesse; it seemed probable that the lovers would never meet again and they could not hide their despair. Conti went off by sea, with Jean Bart, the celebrated sailor who alone, it was thought, could circumvent English and Dutch pirates and get him safely to his new kingdom. The story has a happy ending. At Danzig, the only noble of any importance to come on board Conti’s ship and pay his homage was Prince Sapieha; the Elector of Saxony, backed by a powerful army, had stolen a march on the French and was preferred. In wild spirits Conti returned to Versailles and the arms of Mme la Duchesse. But the King’s attitude to him was in no way modified. He was the only royal prince with no governorship of a province, no job at Court, not even a regiment of his own. The result was that, as the years dragged on uselessly and his hopeful youth was succeeded by a disillusioned middle age, the Prince de Conti became embittered and gave himself up to debauchery.

  The Duc de Maine was Conti’s brother-in-law, having married another tiny sister of M. le Duc’s. He brought more gaiety to the King’s life than all his other children put together, partly because he was the only one whom the King did not terrify; he breezed in and out of his father’s apartment with all the gossip and jokes of the Court. He was noted for his wonderful imitations (when the King lay on his death-bed du Maine was imitating old Dr Fagon, in the next room). As nobody else had much use for him, he spent his life insinuating himself into the good graces of his father and Mme de Maintenon and was rewarded for his assiduity. The Grande Mademoiselle was blackmailed by her cousin the King into leaving whole provinces to du Maine; and he was given the governorship of Languedoc. When he married, his father bought Sceaux for him from Colbert’s children. Du Maine had that high command in the army which w
as denied to Conti; and here he proved himself not only incompetent but also cowardly, a fault, perhaps the only one, that the French nobility could never forgive.

  The King found it out almost by accident. He flew into a violent temper which he worked off on his servants; but he could not live without du Maine, who was his beloved son; so he always turned a blind eye to his faults, of which he was only too well aware.

  The letters the Duke wrote to Mme de Maintenon from the front are as deplorable as his seven-year-old letters are charming. He boasts of his courage, saying she need not keep his exploits to herself — she may pass them on to the King; he begs her to be most severe with anybody who speaks ill of him. ‘Brought up by you, how could I be found wanting?’ he adds cunningly, and signs himself the poor cripple. Belle Madame was nothing to him now that she had lost her hold over the King. (The only one of Athénaïs’ children who was faithful to her as her star waned was her son by Montespan, the Duc d’Antin.)

  Another member of the young set at Versailles was the Duc de Chartres, future Regent of France. He was the only surviving son of Monsieur and the German Madame. Though less brilliant than Conti, he had solid gifts — was a first class soldier and loved science and all the arts. As with Conti, the King was prejudiced against him and never gave him a chance to be useful; and he, too, was driven to drink and sex for consolation. He was forced to marry the youngest daughter of Athénaïs de Montespan (1692). Monsieur did not care for this alliance of his heir with a bastard but was bribed into allowing it by the promise of an enormous dowry, and the order of the Saint-Esprit for the Chevalier de Lorraine. Madame, with her German ideas about genealogy, became hysterical. According to Saint-Simon, when she heard that Chartres had consented to the marriage (the boy was too much intimidated by his uncle to do otherwise), she boxed his ears in front of the whole Court. Neither Madame herself, nor Dangeau nor any other memorialist speak of this famous gifle; nevertheless there is no doubt that her rage and distress over the misalliance were great.

  The Duc and Duchesse de Chartres were married by Cardinal de Bouillon, in a chastened mood after seven years of exile, and the King gave a series of amazing fêtes and entertainments to celebrate the wedding. All Chartres’s suits for these fêtes were designed by Bérain — his wedding clothes were solid with pearls and diamonds, which followed the pattern of the Spanish needlepoint lace with which his coat was trimmed. The bride’s wedding dress was gold and silver with tiny black flowers woven in the gold. The skirt was silver stripes edged with ruffles of gold Spanish needlepoint. This dress took several months to make. Her beautiful hair was done up with diamonds and rubies. Their marriage did not turn out badly. The Duchess was droll and pretty like all the Mortemarts; she amused her husband and did not reproach him for his mistresses; she was too lazy to have lovers so she herself was never an object of scandal. But their many children were a sad failure.

  It is a bad mark to Mme de Maintenon that she not only took no interest in these attractive young people who were beginning their lives under the same roof as herself, but definitely disliked nearly all of them. She was, or pretended to be, fond of the Dauphin and was always kind and understanding about his second marriage. He called on her every day to recount the hunt, leaving out the kill, which she thought too sad. Her feelings for du Maine never altered; he was the person she loved the most. But the others found no favour with her, even her own nursling, Mme la Duchesse. The Princesse de Conti never lived down her unlucky letter. Mme de Maintenon made the stupid observations about present-day youth which always have been and always will be heard. Her great complaint was that the young set at Versailles thought of nothing but pleasure — Satan findeth mischief still and so on — though, given the existence forced on them by the King, it is hard to see how else they could have passed their time. Indeed when, years later, Marie-Anne de Conti turned to religion, Mme de Maintenon most unfairly complained that she had become dowdy and dreary and was not pulling her weight at the Court.

  11. THE NEW RÉGIME

  S’il est ordinaire d’être vivement touché des choses rares, pourquoi le sommes-nous si peu de la vertu?

  LA BRUYÈRE

  No doubt the new régime, imposed by the King and attributed to the influence of Mme de Maintenon, cast a gloom at Versailles. There were a lot of horrid new rules. No plays or operas were allowed during Lent; there was even a question of doing away with the theatre altogether; but Père de La Chaise very sensibly said that if that happened, young people, who must have amusements, would find more equivocal ones. Chatting and giggling at Mass were now severely looked upon — the King, from his little box above the heads of the congregation, was not so busy with his own prayers that he did not see exactly what was happening. He also noticed when people did not go to their Easter duties; sent for them; and spoke. He sent Père de La Chaise to tell Madame she had been talking too freely — she had been heard shouting to the Dauphin that even if she saw him stark naked it would not tempt her — and that she would do well to be stricter with her ladies! Piety was in fashion, though it was noticed that the saints of Versailles often became sinners when they got to Paris. The King himself was trying to set an example of holy moderation. When some bishops went to see him and said he was getting to be too much like Henry VIII, with his claim to be head of the French Church, instead of freezing them up, as they had expected, he merely replied: ‘What I have just heard is considérable.’ All this underlined the fact that the King and his contemporaries were now middle-aged. It was over twenty years since they had first disported themselves in the bosquets and gardens of his father’s little house; and the band of special friends was scattered. Henrietta, the first Madame, had been dead some fifteen years. She was still remembered at the Court and the Dauphin once saw her ghost. He was sitting on the chaise percée by his bed when the door opened and she came into the room, wearing a beautiful yellow dress with blue ribbons. He was so frightened that he leapt back into bed, waking up the Dauphine, and put his head under the bedclothes until the poor ghost had vanished.

  A real ghost appeared at Court in the form of the Marquis de Vardes, a friend of the King’s young days who had been mouldering in exile for twenty years. Louvois met him in the south of France and spoke of him to the King who summoned him. Vardes appeared, looking very odd, in the same clothes as those in which he had gone away, saying, ‘When one is wretched enough to be far from Your Majesty one is not only unhappy but ridiculous’. The King presented the Dauphin to him, pretending that he was a courtier, but Vardes was not taken in. He bowed. ‘What are you doing, Marquis de Vardes, you know very well one does not bow to people when I am there!’ ‘Sire, I know nothing any more — I have forgotten it all.’ The King forgave him the palace intrigue for which he had been exiled and he ended his days at Versailles.

  Louise de La Vallière was ageing in her convent, so ugly now as to be unrecognizable; the King never gave her a thought. She was recalled to his memory for a moment when their son Vermandois died in a garrison town at the age of sixteen (1683). When a little boy he had been mixed up in a homosexual scandal; this had brought down the dreadful wrath of his father who had taken no interest in him thereafter. The King spared himself the painful experience of going to condole with Louise by saying that he longed to go but thought himself too sinful to disturb the devotions of such a holy nun. She said she was still weeping for the birth of her son when she found herself weeping for his death. Other early friends were dead, and yet others, such as the Comtesse de Soissons and her sister, disgraced. Lauzun had come out of prison much less amusing than when he went in.

  Very different were the people who henceforward were to surround the King. Mme de Maintenon ruthlessly cleared the decks of her brother and his unpresentable wife. She kidnapped their child, whom she brought up as her own daughter — finally marrying her to the heir of the Duc de Noailles; she forced Mme d’Aubigné into a nunnery and d’Aubigné into a home for pious gentlemen at St Sulpice. She heard that he sometimes escaped
and made his way to a brothel, or, worse still, would sit on a bench in the Tuileries gardens and talk to anybody who would listen about his ‘brother-in-law’. So she paid a lay brother to follow wherever he went. Fond as she was of him, she really could not have him wandering in and out of her sanctum at Versailles, embarrassing the King and upsetting her own little group of friends with his dreadful jokes.

  This group centred round the two daughters of Colbert, the Duchesses de Beauvilliers and Chevreuse and their husbands; four people who were never happy when they were apart and who spent their lives together. Chevreuse is summed up by Spanheim as devout, a gentleman, weak, ruled by women, to whom nobody pays any attention; but Beauvilliers was more of a person and he became indispensable to the King. His father, the Duc de Saint-Aignan, a jolly, worldly fellow, member of Mme de Sévigné’s circle had been a boon companion of Louis XIV when he was young. Molière portrayed him as Oronte in Le Misanthrope and Racine dedicated his first play, La Thébaïde, to him — he was a member of the Académie française, an arbiter of elegance, director of the King’s fêtes and a repository of all the Court gossip; the King used to find out what was going on from him. He got through an enormous fortune. Beauvilliers, his second son, was the exact opposite. He was intended for the Church; his parents took no interest in him whatever and he was kept in their concierge’s lodge until he was seven. Then he was sent to live with a poor priest who was to educate him — there was not a room for him in the priest’s house and he shared a bed with the maid. When he was fourteen his luck turned; his elder brother died and he became his father’s heir. He was removed from the maid’s bed, given the command of a regiment and for several years lived a life of violent debauchery. When he was twenty-three and she fourteen, he married Colbert’s third daughter, heiress to a huge fortune. She soon converted him, and between them they converted Louise de La Vallière, a work which Beauvilliers undertook in order to atone for his father having encouraged the King’s adultery. The Beauvilliers had thirteen children of whom nine were daughters. Saint-Simon wanted to marry one of them, he did not mind which, in order to have Beauvilliers for a father-in-law. He admired him more than anybody at the Court. But they were all hunchbacks with vocations except one and she, most unsuitably, married the Duc de Mortemart, the raffish nephew of Mme de Montespan. The others became nuns.