The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV

by Anne Somerset

  There were also spiritual pressures on the King. Once again Easter was approaching, so it was the season for the King’s annual attack of guilt. This year his conscience may have been particularly sensitive, for it was whispered that the Pope himself was trying to reform his morals, having apparently sent instructions that the King’s confessor, Père de La Chaise, must resign if Louis continued his affair with Mlle de Fontanges.96 Besides this, in the past three months the Affair of the Poisons had devastated the court, as numerous grand people there had come under suspicion of poisoning and involvement in occult practices. This perhaps inclined the King to ponder matters such as sin and redemption rather more deeply than was usual for him. The long conversations he was having daily with his children’s governess, Mme de Maintenon (the former Mme Scarron), may also have encouraged serious reflections.

  Shortly after being created a duchess, Mlle de Fontanges left court to spend Easter at Maubuisson Abbey, where her sister was abbess. While she was away she was treated by the prior of Cabrières, a holy man who claimed to be able to cure persistent ailments and who currently was held in high repute. For a time it seemed that he had worked wonders, for when Mlle de Fontanges arrived back at court on 2 May she appeared fully recovered. On her return the King visited her immediately, all his scruples seemingly having been dispelled now that she was once again in ‘a condition to please’.97 However it turned out that she was only in temporary remission and by the end of the month she was as ill as ever.

  On 3 July it was reported that the King now regarded her with ‘extreme indifference’ and that the poor young woman was often in tears as she knew she had lost his love. Since her sister had recently been transferred from Maubuisson to take up the position of Abbess of Chelles, on 17 July Mlle de Fontanges set off to visit her there. Her departure underlined the fact that she had achieved a great deal in material terms, for she travelled in an impressive cavalcade of six coaches, none pulled by fewer than six horses. However, as Mme de Sévigné observed, in other ways the scene was so poignant as to inspire compassion: ‘The beauty losing all her blood, pale, altered, overwhelmed with sadness, thinking nothing of forty thousand écus of income and a tabouret, which she has, and desiring health and the King’s heart, which she does not.’98

  She was no better by September, and Mlle de Fontanges now began to voice dark suspicions. Claiming that she must have been poisoned, she requested the King to provide her with guards for her own protection.99 However, nothing could halt her decline, which relentlessly continued. When she returned to court at the end of the month she spent most of the time languishing in her room, where the King paid her only fleeting and infrequent visits.

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  These developments should have favoured Mme de Montespan, but her fortunes showed no sign of reviving as Mlle de Fontanges’s sank lower. Athénaïs’s relations with the King had, in fact, been tense for most of the year. On 30 April the Comte de Bussy had reported, ‘Mme de Montespan has fallen to a point which is scarcely credible; the King does not look at her and, as you may imagine, the courtiers follow his example.’ The following month the King had a furious altercation with her while they were driving from Saint-Germain to Fontainebleau in the Queen’s carriage. It started when he made a fairly mild protest about her reeking of scent, which, as usual, made him feel sick. Athénaïs at once flared up, whereupon the King lost his temper and an unpleasant row ensued.100

  People predicted that if she remained on such poor terms with the King, Athénaïs would have to leave the court but Colbert (whose daughter had recently become betrothed to Mme de Montespan’s nephew) did his best to smooth matters over. In late May he persuaded the King to follow his usual practice of taking medianoche (a midnight feast consumed at the end of fast days) with her. Though Louis grudgingly complied, he insisted that many other people must be present.101

  All this meant that there was little likelihood of Mme de Montespan capitalising on the decline of the Duchesse de Fontanges. What really blighted her prospects, however, was a development that no one had expected. Even in the months when Louis had been most passionately infatuated with Marie-Angélique, he had been simultaneously forming a deep attachment to his children’s governess, Mme de Maintenon. This was now assuming an ever greater significance, leading Mme de Sévigné to write on 9 June 1680, ‘Mme de Maintenon’s favour is still growing while that of Mme de Montespan is visibly diminishing.’102

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  Initially it had seemed that Athénaïs’s choice of Mme Scarron (as she then was) to look after her children had been an unmitigated success. Mme Scarron proved to be a conscientious woman who was devoted to the welfare of her charges and justly prided herself on her talents as a teacher. She particularly doted on the Duc du Maine, whom she described as ‘the prettiest creature in the world who surprises one twenty times a day with his wit’.103 Aged three, the child had caught what was probably polio, which left him permanently lame, but his disabilities were offset by the most winning manner, which captivated all who encountered him. The King came to adore him and their shared affection for this enchanting child was undoubtedly a factor in bringing him closer to Mme Scarron.

  Unfortunately, although her relationship with Mme de Montespan seems to have remained satisfactory while she and the children were living in the Rue de Vaugirard, it deteriorated once they were legitimised and Mme Scarron moved with them into Athénaïs’s lodgings at court. One reason for this was that Mme Scarron was so passionately devoted to the children that she resented their mother’s attempts to control their upbringing. Her lack of professional detachment caused many problems and at times even she admitted that it was unwise of her to be so possessive. When the Duc du Maine fell seriously ill in July 1674 she feared that he would die and leave her as bereft as she had been after the death of his elder sibling, two years earlier. Chiding herself for her weakness she wrote, ‘There is nothing so stupid as to love to excess a child who does not belong to me.’104

  Mme Scarron persuaded herself that Mme de Montespan wanted to institute practices that were actually injurious to the children’s health and, in these circumstances, it amounted to a sin on her part not to protest. In particular, she and Mme de Montespan had conflicting ideas about child nutrition. At this distance it is difficult to judge who was in the right. For example, Mme Scarron complained that Mme de Montespan insisted that the Duc du Maine must eat dry bread at teatime rather than a heavier meal.105 The governess claimed that this hurt his teeth, but while there may have been some truth in this it is hard to believe that it could have caused him serious harm.

  Nevertheless, Mme Scarron felt very strongly about such matters. At one point she raged that the children were being ‘fed as badly as it is possible to be’ and in September 1674 she told her confessor, ‘These poor children are being killed before my eyes without my being able to hinder it.’ She continued,

  The tenderness I have for them makes me unbearable to those to whom they belong and the impossibility of hiding what I think makes me hate some people with whom I spend my life, and whom I would not want to displease even if they were not who they are … Sometimes I am resolved not to put any effort into what I do and to leave these children to the conduct of their mother, but then I am assailed by scruples about offending God by this abandonment and recommence my efforts.106

  It is clear that friction usually arose not because Athénaïs was indifferent towards her children but because she had strong views about infant welfare which differed from those held by the governess. However Mme Scarron’s comments and sources such as the memoirs of her niece* Mme de Caylus (who presumably derived her information from her aunt) all give the impression that Mme Scarron regarded her employer as a bad and unfeeling mother. It is worth considering the evidence for this because, if it is true that Athénaïs showed no love even towards her own children, it becomes easier to accept that, as was later alleged, she had a stranger’s baby sacrificed in her presence.

  Mme de Caylus implies
that in her determination to restore to health the Comte de Vexin (who was a sickly child from birth, plagued by spinal problems) Athénaïs recklessly inflicted on him painful medical treatments, which did him no good. While it may be true that the poor boy suffered at the hands of doctors, his mother doubtless authorised this for the best motives and it is hardly fair to criticise her for it. A letter that she wrote in July 1675, when the three-year-old Vexin was recovering from a serious illness, testifies to her sincere concern for his well-being. Having said that she would have gone mad if he had died, as had seemed probable at one point, she writes that she will not complain if he takes a long time to recover, provided his life is spared.107

  Mme Scarron herself raised no objection to the experimental treatments which were devised for the Duc du Maine in hopes of strengthening his withered leg. She took him to Antwerp to see a doctor who tormented the poor child to no avail and also accompanied him twice to the spa town of Barèges, in 1675 and 1677. For a time it seemed that this had helped him, and Mme Scarron was happy to take some of the credit for this. In the summer of 1681 Maine again went to Barèges, though this time with his tutor. In July Mme Scarron was proclaiming her belief in the efficacy of the waters, but two months later she became incensed when she learned that Mme de Montespan wanted him to stay longer in the town. Furiously she wrote that it was ridiculous that Mme de Montespan should meddle in a matter of which she knew nothing.108

  Mme de Caylus later claimed that when Mme de Montespan’s first child by the King died in 1672, the baby’s governess had been far more distressed than the child’s own mother. In September 1681, following the death of Mlle de Tours, Athénaïs’s fifth child by the King (who had been born in 1674), Mme de Maintenon wrote a letter hinting at the same thing. She confided to her confessor, ‘The King has been very moved by this [the child’s death] and I defer telling you what I know about the pain of Mme de Montespan.’ However, Mlle de Montpensier noted in her memoirs that Mme de Montespan was ‘very afflicted’ by the child’s loss and a letter that Athénaïs penned shortly after the death bears this out. She writes that ever since receiving the news she has been in a deep depression and that whenever she sees a place frequented in the past by her daughter, it adds to her grief.109

  When the Duc du Maine was in his mid-teens he became somewhat alienated from his mother, but letters he wrote as a seven-year–old to Athénaïs (or his ‘belle Madame’, as he calls her) suggest that at that point he adored her. The letters refer to his immense tenderness for her and are full of passionate protestations that he is ‘the man who loves you most in the world’. The letters were composed under the supervision of his governess and it is possible that he wrote these endearments at her instigation, but there is a spontaneity and warmth to them which gives them great conviction. The letters also contain references to presents that Athénaïs sent her son and to games she played with her children. This, coupled with Madame’s statement that ‘the children were always present’ with Mme de Montespan, indicates that, by aristocratic standards of the time, she was by no means inattentive to them.110

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  There can be no question that Athénaïs was a very difficult employer who was often inconsiderate and whose tendency to fly into rages could make life uncomfortable for those around her. On the other hand, Mme Scarron was not without fault herself. One may surmise that, having moved with Athénaïs in salon society on a footing of equality, she found her transformation into a servant difficult to swallow. She nurtured every grievance with a brooding intensity but overlooked all Athénaïs’s kindnesses and acts of generosity. This makes it easier to accept Mme de Sévigné’s contention that it was Mme Scarron’s ‘pride’ which disrupted the governess’s relationship with Mme de Montespan and that, while she did all she could to please the King, she was reluctant to defer to Athénaïs’s orders.111

  There was a certain irony about this for, initially, the King had had grave reservations about Mme Scarron. She herself later recalled that he objected to her intellectual pretensions, complaining that she was interested only in ‘sublime things’. At first, when disagreements had broken out between her and Mme de Montespan, the King had naturally supported Athénaïs.112 Gradually, however, this changed as he became better acquainted with the governess and developed a growing esteem for her.

  At the end of 1674 Mme Scarron received a cash grant of 200,000 livres from the King. This allowed her to buy the chateau and estate of Maintenon, a ‘beautiful and noble’ property whose possession not only yielded an annual income of 10,000 livres but entitled her to style herself the Marquise de Maintenon. It may be that she had Mme de Montespan to thank for the fact that she had been able to make so substantial a purchase. Originally she was to have received only 100,000 livres and Saint-Simon claimed (though long after the event) that it was Athénaïs who persuaded the King to double the amount.113 If so, it failed to sweeten their relationship.

  In February 1675 Mme de Maintenon reported to her confessor, ‘Terrible things are happening here between Mme de Montespan and myself.’ However, she took evident satisfaction in the fact that the King had witnessed one of their arguments the previous day, evidently hoping that from now on she could count on his support. When she accompanied the Duc du Maine to Barèges the following May, the King kept in regular contact with her by letter and by August Mme de Sévigné had heard that Mme de Montespan was annoyed that her governess was going to great trouble to keep the King informed of the Duc du Maine’s progress while ignoring her. Mme de Sévigné believed that by now the two women were on terms of settled antipathy but that, though Mme de Montespan was indignant that the King now showed such partiality to Mme de Maintenon, she could not alter his sentiments. In May 1676 Mme de Sévigné reported that Mme de Maintenon was becoming an important personage at court and the following July she wrote that she was in greater favour than ever.114

  Over the next few years Mme de Maintenon remained an unobtrusive presence at court but all well-informed people were aware that the King held her in the highest esteem. In August 1676 he sent André Le Nôtre to design her gardens at Maintenon, a sure sign of how greatly he valued her, and the following month Mme de Sévigné noted, ‘Her favour is extreme.’ In June 1677 it was rumoured that the King had presented her with precious stones worth 200,000 écus and although this may have been a false report, the fact that it was so readily believed is indicative of her standing. From now on she was regarded as a figure of consequence: when the King awarded her old friend M. de Montchevreuil the revenues of a rich abbey in May 1678, it was Mme de Maintenon who was credited with having secured this.115

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  In late 1679 Mme de Maintenon’s situation at court underwent a transformation. The Duc du Maine now reached an age where his education had to be entrusted to male tutors, and since Mme de Maintenon had not taken charge of Athénaïs’s two youngest children by the King there was no pressing reason for her to remain in Mme de Montespan’s household. The Dauphin, now aged eighteen, had recently been betrothed to Princesse Marie Anne of Bavaria and in December it was announced that Mme de Maintenon had been selected as one of her ladies of the bedchamber. It was an unprecedented honour for a woman who, though of respectable birth, had not married into the aristocracy.

  Mme de Maintenon was delighted, not least because, since she was now granted court lodgings of her own, she no longer had to live in Mme de Montespan’s apartment. Ignorant courtiers assumed that it was Mme de Montespan who had prevailed on the King to provide for a woman who had accorded long and faithful service, but Mme de Sévigné knew better. She told her daughter that Mme de Maintenon’s advancement ‘will not be on account of Quanto’. She had no doubt that the pair now held each other in mutual detestation and that Mme de Maintenon had secured the honour on her own merits.116

  In January 1680 Mme de Maintenon set off to meet the new Dauphine on the French borders so that she could escort her to her new home. By March she was back at court with her new mistress and,
since the King went out of his way to be welcoming and attentive to his daughter-in-law, Mme de Maintenon saw a good deal of him. By this time Mlle de Fontanges’s poor state of health was beginning to cool his affection for her and the King now devoted the hours which in former days he would have passed with Mme de Montespan on visits to the new Dauphine. These courtesy calls were more agreeable to him because they afforded him plenty of opportunities for conversing with Mme de Maintenon.117

  Mme de Montespan was incensed at finding herself relegated to the sidelines. Her fury when Mlle de Fontanges was created a duchess was exacerbated by the fact that this coincided with the time when the King’s attentions to Mme de Maintenon were growing ever more pronounced. On 25 March the Comte de Bussy declared, ‘Nobody, without exception, is on better terms with the King than Mme de Maintenon.’ The court’s wonder at this increased when he began to call on her in her own rooms, rather than meeting in the Dauphine’s apartment. Every evening he would spend two hours chatting animatedly to her with so ‘free and easy an air that it makes this the most desirable place in the world’. This continued throughout the summer of 1680 although by June their evening tête-à-tête, which now lasted from 6 p.m. till ten at night, was taking place in the King’s private apartments.118

  Whereas a few weeks earlier the King had used his visits to the Dauphine as an excuse to see Mme de Maintenon, now the Dauphine almost felt like an intruder on the occasions when she joined them. She invariably found them seated opposite each other in comfortable chairs (in itself an extraordinary violation of the rules of etiquette) and, though they greeted her politely, it was evident that they were longing for her to leave so they could resume the thread of their conversation. No wonder that, by late June, the Duchesse de Fontanges believed herself superseded and was frequently seen weeping. As for Mme de Montespan, she had realised, far too late, that the challenge posed by the King’s ‘flash of passion’ for Marie-Angélique was negligible compared with that which she now faced.119