The Hurlyburly's Husband

by Jean Teulé

  21.

  The bawdy house had a bad reputation. Its wines came from vineyards steeped in mud and sewage from the city. Louis-Henri imbibed nectars redolent of fish glue and pigeon shit, and the trollops were unclean. That was what he liked.

  The whores – doll-like creatures with ragged features – were riddled with venereal disease, and Montespan wallowed in it. He licked their pimples and pustules, their oozing sores, anything that seeped in intimate places, and he asked for more.

  ‘Give me warts on my willie, a good case of the clap and le mal français! Give me magnificent mutilating contagion, for I know someone whom I would like to see infected, impregnated and ravaged o’erall! Has no one the plague here? Or rabies?’

  The Gascon stayed for days and nights on end. From one full moon to the next, he did not leave the establishment. One of the girls was astonished.

  ‘But don’t you have a wife, and children?’

  ‘My wife … My son is with my landlord. Come here, you.’

  With the money from his watch he paid as he went along for his women and his adulterated wine, served by the glass. Twenty-nine days and nights spent inside different women. One lumpy, heavy redhead with an insipid manner said hardly a word to him, and that one word was something to do with a little present. There was another as shrivelled as a prune, who croaked incessantly in her garlicky accent. Still another one had lately been a singer in the port of Dieppe, and she imitated the sailors’ waddle and bawled at him. Then there was one who was as good as gold, flat-chested, with light-brown hair: she sucked him and sometimes she prayed to God: the devil take her satanic signs of the cross! Louis-Henri wanted yet more, worse still. All the rotten harlots in the neighbourhood, whom even the butchers refused – although they were not known to be very fussy (but still, let’s not exaggerate) – the marquis wanted them all. One morning, he offered a very tall, fat, one-eyed Flemish whore the rest of the money from his watch, and said, ‘Will you sell me your dress?’

  22.

  With his face concealed behind an open fan and wearing the Flemish whore’s dress, Montespan arrived at the chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye to rape Françoise.

  He had thrown away his soiled periwig and covered his shoulders with a cape, the hood pulled low over his forehead; his legs were naked and hairy under the dress, and the heels of his huge feet hung over the backs of the ladies’ mules he was wearing. Disguised as a woman, he eluded the watchmen, and hugged the walls, walking with a stoop. He followed a maid carrying a tray full of soft doughy buns flavoured with beer and spices. Waving his fan, he disguised his voice as he enquired of the servant, ‘My dear, I can’t remember where Julie de Montausier’s apartments are. You know, where the new favourite of the—’

  ‘They’re over there, Madame.’

  ‘Ah, yes…’

  He waited for her to leave then flung open the door. ‘’Tis I!’

  Françoise, who had been sitting on a couch conversing with the old duchesse, leapt to her feet on seeing her husband in a dress. Now he swept it up before him, to show her that he was as hard as a rutting billy-goat.

  ‘Françoise, I’ve found the solution for the two of us! I have spent a month in pursuit of shameful diseases and now I will take you and contaminate you as well. Thus, when the King hears of it, he’ll want no more of you. Is this not a most excellent idea, my darling?’

  He tore his whore’s dress over his head and, naked, reached out and seized his wife by the shoulders, but she recoiled and made as if to run away. His fair lady’s soft skin slipped through his fingers. It was like happiness departing, whilst he screamed, ‘I’ll abduct you and take you to Spain!’

  But she was already nothing more than a blur by the French windows that opened onto the terrace and the grounds. As she scurried down the stairway with her round belly, she was like a wash painting, whilst he called, ‘Françoise! Françoise, come back, or I’ll bugger the old baggage! Well then, since that’s the way it stands…’

  He turned back to la Montausier, his cock in his hand. She became a frenzy of lace as goffered as her white hair, and regretted not having her slave there to clout this madman over the head with the parasol. He chased her round the furniture berating her. She would catch a lingering disease. He heaped abuse on her head apt to earn him eternal damnation. ‘Old slut, you pimp of wives, I’m going to take you from behind. I promise, if I catch you, I’ll bugger you. You’ll get a fine dose of the clap.’ He was not sparing in his next volley of insults. There was hardly an imprecation he did not vomit in her neck whilst she shrieked and wailed fit to shatter glass. It was a scene of absolute bedlam. She screamed for help and only owed her salvation to her valets, who were alerted by her cries. The marquis left in the nick of time, dashing stark naked through the French windows, disappearing like the villain in a play. Guards surrounded the duchesse, who was trembling with fear. ‘What happened?’ they asked.

  ‘Monsieur de Montespan came in here like a fury and poured out his rage towards the King, and then said the most unspeakable things to me. And he wanted to ra—ra—’

  She began to swoon and the blood drained from her face, whilst she stammered the most incoherent words. A sergeant came to the glass door and ordered, ‘Find him.’

  23.

  There was a scratching noise at the door. Then it came again. That was the code.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Lauzun.’

  Montespan hesitated, then finally opened the door.

  ‘How did you find me and how did you know the code?’

  The captain of the royal guards came in and looked around.

  ‘So ’tis here, in a servant’s garret under the roof of a brothel behind Place de Grève that you’ve been hiding all these months.’

  Louis-Henri, who had blown out his candle when he heard the scratching at the door, lit it again. The flickering flame wavered at the slightest breath in the miserable maid’s room, illuminated otherwise only by a tiny oeil-de-boeuf.

  ‘I did not have the time to thank you,’ said the marquis, ‘but when I was naked behind the huge oak in the garden, if you had not come to cover me with your coat and lead me out of the estate, I should have been lost.’

  ‘You are lost,’ replied Lauzun. ‘You have caused an unprecedented scandal at Saint-Germain. They are writing songs about you in Paris.’

  ‘I know. I hear them from the window.’

  ‘For fear of being abducted, the favourite now has guards outside her door. And la Montausier never recovered from the outrage. Her reason vacillated so severely that one day, on leaving the King’s mass, she thought she was encountering your ghost, dressed just as she was and calling her by name. She wasted away and died this morning. The sip of a glass of chicory was her undoing. She was close to His Majesty … ’Tis sufficient reason to be drawn and quartered, and have all one’s bones smashed with a mallet.’

  ‘Why did you help me?’

  Again there was scratching at the door. ‘’Tis I, Monsieur!’

  Madame Larivière, a basket of victuals in her hand, came in, complaining, ‘Ah, I do not like this, coming every week into a brothel! And those bawdy wenches going down the stairs with their bundles – where are they off to? Don’t look through any open doors to the bedrooms, Dorothée!’ continued the cook, her back to Montespan.

  On a little table she set down her heavy basket filled with sausages, cooked meals, fruit and wine, and only then did she realise that the marquis had a visitor.

  Lauzun took his leave. ‘Montespan, soon you will no longer be able to breathe the air in Paris …’

  The Gascon asked, ‘Would you lend me some money?’

  The captain smiled – ‘You’d only have to bend your knee to reap a fortune from the royal treasury’ – but he left his well-stuffed pouch on the table and closed the door behind him.

  Louis-Henri pouted. The cook was worried. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You’ve been followed, Madame Larivière.’

  ‘Nay
, we’ve not been followed! We are always very careful, and every time we take a different route to come to your hiding place.’

  The marquis looked through the oeil-de-boeuf. Down below, on the banks of the Seine, the prostitutes who had been lodging him were embarking on a boat. The olive-skinned servant was also observing them. ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘They’re being punished, sent in exile to Nouvelle-France, where there is a great dearth of women. In unexplored territory, they will provide a well-earned rest to the men who trap fur, above all beaver. They’ll live on Indian corn and bear fat, and sleep in log cabins. Ladies of the evening, sorrowfully setting sail for the New World…’

  Louis-Henri closed the window.

  ‘Madame Larivière, you, too, will have to leave Paris, with the lass. People might be annoyed with you as well … As for me, I now know that I must resolve to leave my wife in her cage at court and I shall have to go back to Guyenne, but I shan’t leave until …’

  He bit his upper lip, hesitated, then forged ahead. ‘Madame Larivière, you’ll keep the money in the pouch for the two of you, but first of all I should like you to do an errand for me. You must go to a draper’s, and find a painter, and—’

  ‘A painter? Whatever for?’

  24.

  On 20 September 1668, Montespan returned to court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; no one had thought he would have the audacity to reappear! And his carriage!

  The marquis’s bizarre vehicle drew up outside the gilded railings of the royal estate. Louis-Henri had painted his apple-green travelling berlin black, and had replaced the four feathers at each corner of the roof with gigantic stag’s antlers. A large crêpe veil enveloped the entire carriage, giving it a funereal air, and the black horses were decked out with great pomp as if for a funeral. To his coat of arms on the doors on either side, the Gascon had added horns.

  The guards, impressed, let the horned carriage through, and it came to a halt in the centre of the paved courtyard. The marquis, seated inside, climbed out, dressed in deep mourning. He had furtively hugged the walls on his previous visit, but this afternoon there was nothing discreet about his arrival. He was holding a hat out in front of him, upside down; only the inside was visible.

  He climbed the steps that led to the chateau, walking past husbands who would gladly have thrust their wives into the monarch’s arms if they had stood to benefit. How they did behave, that lot, such baseness … The fear of displeasing their master crushed their souls and degraded their consciences, while the Marquis de Saint-Maurice sniggered, ‘I offered the services of my own wife to the King but, alas, he does not find her pleasing. So I persisted and said, “Not even, Sire, like a post horse you ride once and never see again?” “Do not insist,” replied His Majesty, “I prefer Montespan’s wife.”’

  Next to Saint-Maurice, a comtesse was carrying a little dog in her handmuff, and it showed its teeth and barked when the recalcitrant cuckold walked by. Louis-Henri held a finger out towards its nose and said, ‘Down, Molière!’

  The decor of the reception hall was sumptuous and the ceiling was so laden with garlands and voluptuous goddesses that visitors feared they might fall on their heads.

  It was nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. Louis-Henri was waiting for the King to leave his Council. The courtiers, alarmed by such sheer audacity, moved away. The marquis sat alone opposite the door where the King would come out. His face was inscrutable, his hand was on the hilt of his sword and, if he had had a glass of water on his head, not a drop would have been spilt, for he was sitting bolt upright.

  The King came out. Montespan knew the King was short but was surprised by quite how short. He was tiny and tried to compensate for it by holding himself stiffly. He wore high-heeled shoes and had a thin moustache. Beyond that, Louis-Henri could not make out his features, for Louis XIV had stopped in front of a window with his back to the sun. After a short silence the radiant figure of the monarch, silhouetted against the light, with his ministers scurrying around him, enquired of the Gascon, ‘Why are you all in black, Monsieur?’

  While etiquette required one to remove one’s hat in the presence of His Majesty, Louis-Henri now placed the grey hat on his head – a colour the King hated – and replied, ‘Sire, I am in mourning for my love.’

  ‘In mourning for your love?’

  ‘Yes, Sire, my love has died. Killed by a rogue.’

  At a time of universal and abject servility, anyone who dared to raise their heads above the fawning crowd had to be peculiarly hot-blooded and uncommonly determined.

  The distinguished figures at the far end of the reception hall were frozen with terror at the marquis’s behaviour. The hot-headed Gascon had overstepped all bounds. Louis XIV would not tolerate this direct insult – a crime of lèse-majesté.

  The marquis, having said his piece, bowed arrogantly and, in full view of the courtiers, broke his sword before the tyrant to show that he would no longer serve him, for he was a man who loved too much. Then he very casually turned his back on the King. The sound of his heels faded away across the waxed parquet floor and he returned to his carriage.

  Such behaviour was unthinkable. No one had ever committed such an offence in His Majesty’s presence. Everything – fire, water, night, day – was subject to the will of this living god, whose face was faintly pitted by smallpox. The King said nothing, and the silence spoke volubly of the crime committed. Then he spluttered with laughter. ‘And so? I am fucking his wife! What more could I do for him?’

  Everyone around him laughed; of course they had to agree. The horned carriage had not gone far before the King’s henchmen caught up with it. Lauzun was at their head and he rode up alongside the marquis’s door in a swirl of dust and shouted, at a gallop, ‘Let your coachman go on and drive the berlin to Rue Taranne, but he will have to stop first to leave you outside Fort-l’Évêque.’

  ‘The prison in the Vallée de la Misère?’

  ‘I have a Zettre de cachet which authorises the King to imprison whomsoever displeases him for an indeterminate period and without trial!’

  25.

  ‘The King did give me horns! Take heart, my soul

  And admire thy bliss

  Presently thou shalt go – be praised, oh wife –

  To the highest point of honour!’

  In the cramped, insalubrious prison on Quai de la Mégisserie – nicknamed the Vallée de la Misère because of the great number of animals that were put to death there – Montespan, with blood on his nails, languished behind a door locked by the most secure of padlocks. Through a high basement window, a ray of light entered the dry well that served as a dungeon at Fort-l’Évêque, and left a little dusty patch of brightness on the earthen floor. The isolation could not appease his torment. While the animals being slaughtered outside screamed with pain, the marquis in fetters sang at the top of his voice the last couplets telling the good folk of their King’s loves:

  ‘To be a king’s cuckold, ’tis untold honour,

  A plague on it, I know it well!

  Black sorrow is most blameworthy

  How dare I flee my own good fortune?’

  ‘Shut up in there! You’re singing off-key! … I’d rather listen to the sound of those beasts having their throats cut! I have a musical ear, I do!’

  Louis-Henri turned this way and that inside his pitch-dark cell.

  ‘Is someone there?’

  A voice replied in the obscurity, ‘Aye, there is, someone they’ve thrown in this prison, but what for? I’m not a libertine writer, nor a shameless hussy, nor an indebted gamester. I’m not mad enough to have committed a crime of lèse-majesté. So what am I doing in Fort-l’Évêque, the prison for the King’s arrests? And if now, in addition, a fellow inmate who is such a poor singer is inflicted upon me…’

  Silence reigned in the dungeon, then Louis-Henri, in chains and on his knees, dragged himself across the mouldy straw to the faint ray of light. In the darkness he looked for his fellow prisoner. ‘Where ar
e you?’

  The other voice continued, ‘’Tis true, indeed! I am naught but a maternity doctor, doing my job, so why have I landed here? It was the end of the afternoon. I was alone in my house on Rue Saint-Antoine. I was about to have supper when there came a knock at the door. I opened it. Hiding on either side were two soldiers (I could hear the clicking of their weapons against the buttons of their uniform) and they grabbed me by the arms. A third man arrived from behind and bound my eyes and ordered, “Not a sound or I’ll cut your throat! Monsieur Clément, bring your instrument case.” Forsooth! I thought, I have nothing to fear. Am I not used to these mysterious little expeditions to the homes of people of rank at a time when my young clients often come into the world as best they can? I was made to climb into a coach from court (I noted the delicate creaking of the oiled hubs as used at Versailles) and, after we had ridden for a while, I was left at the foot of a stairway, which I climbed, guided by a nurse (she had a millet-seed rattle bumping against her chest). And I went into a bedroom on the first floor of a discreet dwelling set back from Rue de l’Échelle.’

  ‘How did you know the address if you were blindfolded?’

  ‘My ears were not bound …’

  Chains dragged along the floor and the face of Clément, the maternity doctor, appeared in the faint ray of light.

  ‘Just nearby, I recognised the unbearable ring of the cracked bell at the Chapelle Sainte-Agonie. I had gone there one morning to assist a birth (miraculous, surely) and I had complained to the sisters, “You’ll have to change that bell with that off-key knell to it, else I’ll not come back to this hellish racket to bring any more little baby Jesuses into the world!” And I also knew it was set back from the street because downstairs I could hear the hammering of a wooden heel-maker. He uses wood that is too freshly cut. I bought some heels from him once and very soon they split. And I knew from the hammering that it was this wood that wasn’t dry enough that he was hitting. You can tell things like that from the tonality …’ he continued, clicking his fingers next to his ear and dislodging his dusty wig, which gave off a cloud of powder.