by Jean Teulé
Montespan lifted his head to the ceiling, stared at it at length and scratched his neck. The stinking horseman went over to him, and ran a finger over the saltpetre in the wall.
‘Your wife’s children will be better lodged than you are. Your chateau is full of cracks, the stones are coming loose, it is falling into ruin. You need to repair a step that the frost has split. One might presume – at best – that this is the home of a priest! Your situation is far from easeful, all you own is debts. You have been ostracised from the lansquenet tables in Paris, and whilst they may have been your wicked stepmothers, they were also your wet nurses. What are you going to live off, since your income amounts to no more than four hundred livres a year? You also owe a small fortune to a labourer who is going to take part of your land from you. Your disgrace in exile is a social death sentence. You are at the bottom of the ladder of nobility and your wife’s merit would serve more to elevate you than anything that you might be able to achieve. If you would agree to remain silent and bow to the royal will rather than coming to this province to languish in your bitterness, you would own an hôtel particulier in the centre of Paris with thirty servants, as well as hundreds of hectares of land, from which you would receive your seignorial dues, and forests, and hunting grounds!’
Montespan let the emissary continue to rattle on in this meaningless way and went to sit down on a folding chair of iron and canvas. He listened to the wind whistling through the foothills of the Pyrenees, like a Sardana dance, and heard the amount the emissary from Versailles was now offering.
‘Three hundred thousand écus! That means nine hundred thousand livres, almost one million. It is yours for the asking. What do you reply?’
Louis-Henri looked at the icicles hanging from the roof, then at the emissary.
‘I do not know what is keeping me from throwing you out of the window.’
37.
‘I can’t stand having to pay for everything with coins stamped with the head of my wife’s lover! Particularly as he is hideous, the filthy dwarf! What on earth does she see in him?’
Louis-Henri picked up a silver écu and began to detail the defects of the engraved figure. ‘His nose is hooked and over-long, he has a thick neck, his cheeks are flabby. His breastplate with that Roman draping is ridiculous. I don’t like his wig at all! ’Tis said his charm is … exotic. Well, I can’t see it myself.’
The marquis bit the coin and tossed it to the steward.
‘Catch it, Cartet, and tell the carpenter to make a wooden crate.’
‘Another coffin? What shall we bury this time, your hope?’
‘No, it shall be for the painting. Don’t forget to measure it.’
While the steward was on his way out, a voice with a Montlhéry accent could be heard.
‘The pose, Monsieur de Montespan.’
The itinerant painter, who travelled the length and breadth of France, going from chateau to chateau to offer his talents as a portrait painter and decorator (friezes for walls and above doors, illustrated ceilings) to the petty nobility, adjusted his model’s pose.
‘Turn more to the right, with your head looking straight towards me; there, that’s it. Now don’t move.’
Louis-Henri was sitting at his desk in the study on the first floor of the chateau, a freshly cut crow’s quill between his fingers, pretending to write on an immaculate sheet of paper. Bareheaded, wearing an off-white hemp shirt, he had not wanted to cover his scalp with a wig, or to wear any of the ribbons, feathers, lace or artificial flowers with which a marquis posing for posterity generally adorned himself. The cuckold had wanted something intimate, and he contemplated the artist as if he were looking lovingly at his wife.
The painter from Montlhéry sat on a stool with his legs apart and sometimes leant forward to examine his model, accentuating in silence the curve of an eyelid heavy with sadness, or enhancing the shadow of a faint smile on his lips.
‘Your mouth and your eyes often contradict each other,’ said the portrait painter. ‘When your pupils sparkle with mischief, your mouth droops in sorrow, and when your lips are upturned and jesting, your eyes grow misty with tears.’
The marquis said nothing and began to write.
23 June 1669
Françoise,
The window was open. The cicadas were singing. There was a whooshing sound as the scythes sliced through the stalks of grain. Louis-Henri looked up at the painter for a moment, then dipped his nib into the inkwell, into the black liquid made of vitriol and oak-gall.
Here is my portrait painted by Jean Sabatel that you shall put in your bedchamber when the King is no longer there. Let it remind you of me, and of the excessive tenderness I feel for you, and how many ways I liked to demonstrate that, on every occasion. Place my portrait therefore in the light, and look now and again upon a husband who adores you: a poor spouse who, because his wife has been taken from him, no longer knows what he does. I have become as accepting of ruin as they tell me you are now accepting of the bad air of a palace built on quicksand and degradation; there are people for whom I no longer fear ruin –you!
The marquis’s pen hurried over the page, scratching heavily on the paper.
My fair bird, my turtledove, with your neck adorned with pearls you are inside a gilded cage two hundred leagues from where I languish in forced exile. I could not like any place where you are not. Is it not possible, my goddess, for you to fly away and join me? Or might you not know the love that your beautiful eyes, my sunlight, have truly aroused in my heart? ’Tis more than rage that I feel in my soul, knowing that you have been stolen by another who does not love you as I do. If you do not blush, my lady, I blush for you. But I swear to you on your person, which is what I hold dearest on earth, that …
The door to the study opened. Montespan looked round. The painter lifted his brush from the canvas. It was Dorothée, who had come to look for the doll with the hurluberlu that Marie-Christine, who was standing behind her, had left there. The child, who shared the marquis’s sad fate, clung to the servant’s skirts. Dorothée was her only playmate: she was sixteen now and she looked like a woman. As for Marie-Christine, her cheeks were hollow, making her nose appear large. She was withering like a flower deprived of water. Now she came up to Louis-Henri and asked, ‘To whom are you writing, Father?’ The marquis smiled, but his eyes were creased with sadness. Tall, big-boned, muscular, infinitely polite, he enquired of his daughter if she had slept well the previous night. The child replied that henceforth she would like to sleep with Dorothée.
‘For I am filled with dreams, alone in my bed. I fear the spirits, since my maman died.’
Montespan did not know what to say. Dorothée, who was more sensitive than she might have appeared, broke the silence by offering breakfast to the child – she was so thin – but she refused.
‘No, I am not hungry.’
‘But you must eat – it’s no laughing matter; you must look at the clock face on the church tower if you are hungry, and when it tells you that eight or nine hours have passed since last you ate, then eat a good soup, take the clock’s word for it, and you will begin to feel better.’
The two girls left the room, closing the door behind them. Louis-Henri took up his pose again and peered pensively at his letter.
Our little girl is so thin, and she is exceeding weak. I would like her to drink milk, as the most beneficial of remedies, but she is so greatly averse to it that I hardly dare suggest it. She often suffers from lethargy and weariness, and loses her voice. I believe you would have reason to complain of me if I were not to let you know that her illness is serious. All the more so, as it has been thus for years, and this length of time is much to be feared unless she can find your gentle presence beside her again, which would keep her from being devoured by sorrow.
And I no longer condemn your behaviour; each of us seeks his own salvation. But assuredly I shall not find bliss through the path you take. Cast off the ambition with which they have cloaked you there, and you may n
ot be as unhappy as you might think, and I am certain, my lady, that when disappointment sends you running into my arms, your love shall return.
This most passionate of husbands continues to adore you.
Louis-Henri de Pardaillan
Marquis de Montespan
A separated albeit inseparable husband
The cuckold slipped his folded missive into an envelope and was about to seal it when the painter from Montlhéry advised him, ‘If the letter is for your wife, and you send it together with my painting, it’s pointless to close the envelope. At the palace, letters are inspected by the King’s “black cabinet” and they will intercept your words.’
‘Ah, you’re right,’ conceded Louis-Henri.
So the marquis, with an insolence and pride that were inversely proportional to his reduced fortune, wrote on the back of the envelope:
To all those bitches and bastards in His Majesty’s entourage who find cause for amusement in my correspondence!
38.
That day in December 1669 was one to remember. Louis-Antoine, the little Marquis d’Antin, was riding an English mare for the first time – an old, calm mount that ambled slowly across the cobblestones in the courtyard. The father admired his son’s bearing, the instinctive way he sat on the horse. Marie-Christine by contrast, was terrified of horses.
‘I’ve never seen a child sit better in a saddle, his body straight and his legs positioned as if he’d had instruction. Look at that, Cartet. Doesn’t he look the proper horseman?’
The steward, who was at the top of a ladder leaning against the chateau’s red entrance gate, finished working loose some bricks that he dropped on the ground, then turned to watch the marquis’s son. As he turned back to the gate, he cried, ‘Upon my word, I can see a carriage approaching, Captain. You are to have a visitor. There are guards walking alongside. I think they are dragoons.’ ‘Dragoons?’
Montespan was pleased to have visitors; they distracted him from the boredom of his isolated marquisate, and sometimes brought him news of other provinces and even of court, but why should there be dragoons alongside that coach? He went up to the gate, whilst more bricks rained down. The carriage stopped outside the chateau and a gentleman stepped out, peering at the steward on his ladder.
‘Are you doing repairs, Marquis?’
‘We are raising the roof of the entrance. For my horns.’
‘Ah, still at it with your Gascon tricks? Such poor taste …’
An anxious woman, taking weary little steps, came to join them. It was Louis-Henri’s mother; the visitor greeted her. ‘Good day, Madame. How are you?’ Chrestienne de Zamet had aged greatly since her son’s return to Bonnefont the previous year, and she had a bad cough, but she had not lost her wit.
‘It is said one should not speak of one’s troubles – nor of one’s children!’
‘Are you poorly? Are you taking care of yourself?’
‘I am taking a goodly number of remedies, it would be easier to count the grains of sand on the beach. To what do we owe the honour of your visit, Monsieur, representing as you do His Majesty in Guyenne?’
The intendant was wearing robes, and gloves of Point d’Angleterre lace. He had a small, ugly face, and a great deal of hair, which spared him the need for a wig. From his breath it was obvious that he had ruined his stomach through an excessive fondness for vinegar. He said to Louis-Henri, ‘Bring all your people together in one room. I must speak to you in their presence.’
‘Indeed?’
Montespan gave a short whistle through his fingers. ‘Cartet, come down!’ Then he called, ‘Madame Larivière! Dorothée!’ The cook came out into the courtyard with a cloth in her hands, and Marie-Christine’s playmate opened a window on the first floor. ‘Coming!’ They joined the marquis and Chrestienne de Zamet in the old guardroom. The intendant looked at Louis-Henri in astonishment. ‘Is that all? Don’t you have any other servants?’
‘I am somewhat short of money, Monsieur Macqueron … And when my father passed away, this spring in Toulouse, the estate was so burdened with debts, because he lent me so much, that in the end I have had to renounce it.’
‘You won’t make me weep over the state of your fortune, Marquis. None other I know on earth could so easily become exceedingly rich.’
A clerk stood by prepared to take notes. Outside, the dragoons were posted around the chateau walls and in the grounds to prevent anyone from leaving, but the intendant seemed discomfited. He grimaced, then asked, ‘Monsieur de Montespan, at the time of the War of Devolution, did you have a dalliance with a young brunette from these parts with shining eyes and hot blood, a lass you are reputed to have abducted and dressed as a soldier in order to introduce her into your company and have her under your thumb? The family of the abducted woman have filed a complaint against you.’
‘What?’
‘There is yet another charge against you. You are accused of threatening to attack a convent in order to abduct a pretty nun, a sort of amorous dragonnade, if you like…’
Montespan spluttered in protest.
‘If these facts are shown to be true, you risk life imprisonment in the dungeon at Pignerol.’
‘It’s all false, utterly false! Oh, God’s teeth!’ exclaimed the marquis indignantly. ‘I am not interested in that sort of trickery outside marriage. I have never been one of those charmers, those so-called “lovers of the eleven thousand virgins”. Never! A well-blessed husband like myself?’
Louis-Henri’s feverish mother immediately came to her child’s defence.
‘My boy is honest, Monsieur Macqueron, and civil, and is known for his high moral standards.’
‘Madame, a major who was posted outside Puigcerdá, a libertine duc who is delighted by this story, has accused your son.’
‘Such a charitable instinct to wish wounds and gashes upon one’s fellows is exceeding common in the army,’ said Cartet.
The intendant of Guyenne did indeed have his doubts. In the marquis’s frank gaze he detected real stupefaction, which he had expected. From his robes he took a letter sealed in yellow (for judicial matters). From the colour of the wax, Montespan suspected that the missive would also contain further barbs. Macqueron continued, ‘Two months ago, a special envoy from Louvois brought me a letter which he asked me to read in his presence. I was much surprised, but as I feared some shady mischief, I sought to protect myself and used the pretext of going to fetch my spectacles from the adjacent office. There I ordered my clerk to stand right next to the door and to listen and write down what I was about to say out loud to the envoy. And this is what I read,’ he concluded, handing a copy of his letter to the marquis, who unfolded it and read.
21 September 1669
To Macqueron, Intendant of Guyenne
Have the captain, the Marquis de Montespan, convicted of some offence in order to try, through whatever means available, to implicate him in a matter that will appear to be of a legal nature.
If you can contrive to have him strongly accused so that the Sovereign Council will have the wherewithal to hand down a severe sentence, that would be a good thing indeed. You may suspect the grounds thereof if you are at all acquainted with what is happening in this place.
Pray omit nothing that might ensure a successful conclusion to what I desire at this time, and give me news of it every day by separate letter in your hand, returning this one to me.
Louvois
Montespan was stunned. He echoed the last words of the letter.
‘“… returning this one to me …” He did not want his perfidy to remain in the archives …’
‘Whereas I,’ said the intendant, ‘insisted on having this copy to absolve myself of responsibility, by leaving to posterity proof of the minister and the King’s intervention.’
The enormous flue fireplace in the old guardroom drew poorly and the room was smoky. The marquis didn’t feel well, his head was spinning. He was nauseous and opened a window wide, despite the fact that it was winter. In the court
yard by the horned carriage now covered in wisteria, Louis-Antoine was doing exercises on a pommel horse. The cuckold turned back to the room. Matters could not be clearer: from being quite well-disposed towards him and offering him plenty of gold, His Majesty’s hand had turned to persecution. The marquis was to be accused of as many wrongs as possible, even if they had to be invented, and the Gascon’s image of model spouse had to be sullied. The rebel had to be brought to ruin by means ‘that will appear to be of a legal nature’: so it was written in the letter.
‘They are conspiring to find a way to get rid of me once and for all, falsifying the facts and accusing me of a crime punishable by life imprisonment …’
A long silence reigned in the hall until Macqueron resumed his story.
‘To begin with, I obeyed Louvois’s instructions most tamely, and ordered an investigation against you, and I demanded that a number of stories be constructed that would implicate you and seem plausible before a tribunal, even if they required false testimony. But now I have my scruples, this weighs upon my conscience …’
‘It does not seem to bother them at Versailles, “if you are at all acquainted with what is happening in this place”.’
‘Before I look for a pretext to try and avoid the Sovereign Council, which would sentence you, I would like first of all to be absolutely certain of the veracity of your good behaviour. That is why I wish to question your people in your presence.’