If the King had harboured such thoughts, ridding himself of Athénaïs’s presence would have presented little difficulty. Since she was the mother of six of his surviving children, imprisoning her would have been embarrassing, but she could easily have been forced to enter a convent. It could have been given out that she had done so of her own volition and, after a brief flurry of interest, this would have excited little comment. It is inconceivable that Louis would have baulked at adopting such a course had he believed her guilty of unspeakable crimes.
The King may have accepted that in 1667 Mme de Montespan had briefly been a client of la Voisin’s and that the latter had introduced her to Mariette and Lesage. If so, this was something he decided to overlook, having presumably satisfied himself that after the arrest of Mariette and Lesage in 1668 she had had no further dealings with people of that kind. On the other hand Louis may have concluded that everything Mariette and Lesage had said about her had been untrue and that he need have no worries on that score.
Exactly when the King resolved this matter to his satisfaction is hard to say. It would seem that in late February 1681, when Colbert and Duplessis wrote their memoranda in defence of Mme de Montespan, the King still needed to be convinced that Athénaïs could not have done these dreadful things. While it is unclear at what point Colbert’s arguments prevailed, it is noteworthy that on 28 March the King and Colbert both signed a document approving the foundation of a convent of Ursuline nuns, which Athénaïs had set up at her own expense. Since the document states that the King was ‘desirous to treat the said lady favourably’, this perhaps indicates that he was now persuaded of her innocence. Certainly by 17 April, when La Reynie wrote a memorandum noting that the King had decided what action to take against prisoners like Guibourg, Galet and Mme Chapelain,1 it can be assumed that Louis had also made up his mind about Mme de Montespan.
* * *
Mme de Montespan therefore continued at court, almost certainly unaware of the manner in which she had been traduced. However, her life there was no longer enviable. It was true that Mlle de Fontanges no longer posed any kind of threat to her, but even after that poor young woman retired from court, the King showed no desire to resume a sexual relationship with Athénaïs. This was doubtless partly attributable to the fact that she was now fatter than ever: in July 1681 Mme de Maintenon informed a correspondent that Athénaïs was now an ‘astonishing’ size, ‘having grown a foot stouter since you saw her’.2
To the amazement of the court, the King did not seek a replacement for Mlle de Fontanges. He never took another mistress, ‘in spite of the advances that did not fail to be made him’. At first people remained on the lookout for the advent of a new favourite, but none appeared on the scene. In August 1681 Mme de Maintenon quashed rumours that the King had embarked on a flirtation with a young woman who had recently come to court, telling a cousin he could deny such reports ‘without fear of appearing ill-informed’.3
Mme de Montespan was still Surintendante of the Queen’s household, so the King’s abandonment of her did not result in a complete loss of status. She took her duties seriously and liked to think she was indispensable, boasting to her sister in 1683 that she had had the greatest difficulty persuading the King to grant her leave of absence.4 Athénaïs’s position as mother of the King’s children also earned her a measure of respect. In November 1681 her two youngest children by Louis were legitimised and brought to court, and this official recognition enhanced her own prestige.
Athénaïs still participated with apparent enjoyment in all court festivities and although she and the King were no longer lovers Louis did not ostracise her. She was invariably included in the house parties that the King gave in his newly built retreat, Marly, and, once back at court, he paid her daily visits. He went to see her immediately after attending mass and called on her again when he had finished supper. However, these visits were always brief and more than one source states that the King took care to be accompanied by courtiers so he would not have to be alone with her.5
What was most galling for Athénaïs, however, was that while the King still treated her with courtesy and consideration, it was obvious to all that he much preferred to spend time with Mme de Maintenon. Things were slightly eased by the fact that Athénaïs now saw relatively little of the former governess. In September 1681 Mme de Maintenon reported that in the last month they had encountered each other only once and on such occasions they usually managed to keep up an appearance of civility. At one point in the summer of 1681 they went for a stroll together, arm in arm and roaring with laughter. However, as Mme de Maintenon sourly commented later, this did not diminish their underlying enmity.6
* * *
In late July 1683 the Queen developed a boil in her armpit and by bleeding her repeatedly ‘the doctors … killed her as surely as if they had thrust a dagger into her heart’. Though briefly upset, the King was more shocked than truly afflicted by this unexpected event; the ironic thing was that it was Mme de Montespan who probably felt the bereavement more keenly. She had taken good care of the Queen in her final hours and though her tears when Marie-Thérèse died were presumed insincere, she had suffered a severe loss with the Queen’s passing.7 Now that she had no office in Marie-Thérèse’s household, Mme de Montespan’s presence at court was redundant and her future looked more uncertain.
Mme de Maintenon was concerned that now he could no longer sleep with the Queen, the King would be tempted to look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. Twelve days after Marie-Thérèse’s death she urged a friend to devote all her energies ‘to praying for the King: he has more need of divine grace than ever to sustain a way of life contrary to his inclinations and habits’.8 In the event the King endured no more than a brief period of celibacy. Although the exact date is unknown (the night of 9 October 1683 has been suggested or, alternatively, some time in January 1684, when mourning for the Queen officially ended), within a few months of his wife’s death the King secretly married Mme de Maintenon.
The marriage was never officially acknowledged, but gradually rumours began circulating that the King had taken her as his wife. Many people were initially inclined to dismiss the reports as ridiculous, but in time even the most sceptical observers accepted them. The German diplomat Ezechiel Spanheim professed himself mystified as to why the King had yoked himself to this forbidding woman who was some years his senior. In the end he suggested that he had done so in order ‘to mortify his senses out of penitence for his unlawful love affairs’ but, in fact, as Mme de Maintenon herself acknowledged, Louis ‘loved her as much as he was capable of loving’. The marriage did not provide her with the same degree of emotional fulfilment, but she believed she had been called upon by God to perform the valuable task of securing Louis’s salvation. While applying herself conscientiously to carrying out what she saw as her primary duty, she lamented that her destiny had prevented her from leaving a court she despised. As she herself reflected many years later, ‘God did me the favour of making me insensible to the honours which surrounded me and only feeling the subjection and constraint.’9
The extraordinary elevation of her former employee constituted a severe trial for Athénaïs. If she desired a favour from the King she now had to humble herself and approach him through Mme de Maintenon. In December 1685, for example, she wanted her son by M. de Montespan to be given a position in the Dauphin’s entourage and this was only granted after Mme de Maintenon informed the King of her wishes. Such enforced obsequiousness did not accord well with Athénaïs’s natural temperament and even when she strove to be friendly towards the former governess, people felt sure that before long she would find it impossible to keep up the effort. In 1685 Mme de Maintenon told a friend that Mme de Montespan had recently invited her to Clagny, but one of Mme de Maintenon’s servants had declared that she ‘did not think I was safe there’. This has been taken as an allusion to Mme de Montespan’s reputation as a poisoner, though it may simply have referred to the possibility that she would be sei
zed by a fit of rage and become abusive. By this stage she was ‘so mad … when she was in a temper’ that she might even resort to violence.10
As was only to be expected, there were all too many occasions when Athénaïs’s self-control proved unable to withstand the strain and she permitted her sarcastic tongue an over-free rein. As Ezechiel Spanheim put it, ‘The jealousy of the aforesaid lady towards a person who was in every way inferior to her … and whose fortune, so to speak, she had made, could not but break out on several occasions.’ With regrettable regularity she gave vent to her mortification by letting fly with ‘pungent barbs and bitter jokes’ that subtly denigrated Mme de Maintenon and made everyone present uncomfortable.11 Mme de Maintenon seemingly shrugged off these incidents and would even repeat Mme de Montespan’s comments to amuse her friends, but despite her outward composure Athénaïs’s repeated needling left her seething. Far worse, by indulging her ill humour at Mme de Maintenon’s expense, Mme de Montespan succeeded in antagonising the King.
In December 1684 Athénaïs experienced what Saint-Simon described as ‘the first major step of her disgrace’ when the King moved her out of the lodgings adjoining his own apartment at Versailles and relocated her in a suite of rooms on the ground floor. Mme de Montespan did not take kindly to being relegated to the sidelines and in 1686 there was an unpleasant incident after she received what she considered to be an intolerable affront. That year, unbeknown to most of the court (including Athénaïs) the King had been afflicted by an anal fistula. On 21 May it was announced that for the good of his health he would leave for the spa town of Barèges in three weeks’ time, but Mme de Montespan was not among those who were selected to accompany him. Incensed at her exclusion, on 25 May Athénaïs had a showdown with the King. She became ‘so carried away that she openly complained’ and was reported to have shouted ‘several things which would not have been prudent to say’. She then stormed from court, announcing she would seek refuge with her sister at Fontrevault Abbey. She wanted her two youngest children to join her there but next day, as they were climbing into their coach, the King sent word that he would not permit his son the Comte de Toulouse to leave.12
In the end all was smoothed over. On 27 May the King decided that after all, he would not go to Barèges. He ordered the Duc du Maine to inform his mother of the change of plan and she at once returned to court. The next day the King visited her as normal without making any reference to the contretemps that had occurred.13 But though the incident appeared forgotten, it had weakened Athénaïs still further by underlining that the King’s tolerance was not inexhaustible and that she remained at court on sufferance.
After this Mme de Montespan took to spending long periods away from court. In the spring of 1687 she absented herself to take the waters at Bourbon and then went to stay for several weeks with her sister at Fontrevault. She did not return to Versailles until September and in subsequent years she repeated this pattern. However, as one courtier remarked, these ‘long absences … merely ruined her little remaining credit; it was furthermore thought [she took them] more to ease her peevish temper than for health reasons’. During the months she did attend court, the King no longer unfailingly visited her in the evenings and she was also not automatically included on excursions to Marly.14
Despite the fact that she was being gradually shut out from the King’s inner circle, Athénaïs was unable to summon up the will to leave the court. Although in former days her pride had been legendary, she could not bring herself to forsake this demeaning existence and instead endured a succession of slights in order to cling on to a life which had become utterly pointless. When at last she did the right thing, it was almost by accident.
Having hitherto been responsible for arranging her children’s education, Mme de Montespan was understandably furious when, without prior consultation, her youngest daughter, Mlle de Blois, was entrusted in March 1691 to the care of Mme de Montchevreuil, a hideous, humourless prude who was the best friend of Mme de Maintenon. The provocation made Mme de Montespan ‘forget all her wise resolutions … not to give the King any pretext to get rid of her’. She angrily sent word to Louis that since she was being deprived of her children, she would like him to authorise her retirement from court. It was a fatal blunder, for the King had been longing for her departure for some time. He ‘joyfully responded’ that she had his permission to withdraw and then, to guard against her changing her mind, he allocated her apartment at Versailles to the Duc du Maine.15
Before long Mme de Montespan came to regret her precipitate action. The following month she told friends ‘that she had not absolutely abandoned the court; that she would still see the King sometimes and that in truth they had been a bit hasty to remove the furniture from her apartment’.16 It turned out, however, that she had taken an irrevocable step: she would never see the King again.
Occasionally, when the King was absent, she crept back to Versailles, paying brief visits when he was away during the summer of 1691, and again in April 1694. Such appearances only made people compare her with those ‘unfortunate souls who return to the places they inhabited to expiate their faults’.17 Despite her evident yearning to be readmitted, her exclusion from the royal presence remained absolute. She was not even invited to the wedding of her daughter, Mlle de Blois, to the Duc de Chartres in February 1692, or that of the Duc du Maine a month later.
* * *
Mme de Montespan lived for sixteen years after her withdrawal from court and, much as she had dreaded leaving, there is reason to believe she found happiness elsewhere. When in Paris she lived at the Filles de Saint-Joseph, a convent of which she had been a munificent patron for some years and which recently had been enlarged at her expense. Her life there was far from reclusive: although she had become estranged from the Duc du Maine, she kept in touch with her other children, including her son by the Marquis de Montespan. Besides this, aristocratic ladies and old friends from court made a point of visiting her. After a time she bought properties at Petit Bourg and Oiron in Poitou, and she also paid regular visits to the spa town of Bourbon. In addition she spent several months each year with her favourite sister at Fontrevault Abbey.
Merely because she passed so much time in religious institutions, it should not be thought that her life was devoid of fun. She once described Fontrevault as ‘a convent which nobody can resist … and where all the nuns are a thousand times happier than anyone who lives in the world’. She succeeded in communicating her enjoyment of what it had to offer to those around her, for she still possessed the quality of infectious gaiety that had been so marked in her youth. Once, when she was at Fontrevault, a niece of hers wrote that Mme de Montespan had the talent of making every day seem like a fete day. Even hearing a sermon with her could be fun. In 1696 Mme de Coulanges informed a friend that Athénaïs was taking her to listen to a celebrated preacher who bore a striking resemblance to Mme de Montespan’s late brother the Duc de Vivonne. Vivonne had died ‘rotten in body and soul’ a few years before and Mme de Coulanges admitted that she and Athénaïs were never able to repress their laughter when they heard pious exhortations and holy sentiments issue from the mouth of one who reminded them so strongly of that renowned debauchee.18
Gradually, however, pleasure ceased to be of such importance to Athénaïs. She had always given generously to charity, but in later years she devoted most of her annual income to deserving causes. Apart from her endowment of the Filles de Saint-Joseph, where she set up an embroidery workshop for poor girls, she established orphanages at Fontainebleau and Oiron, and also alleviated the lot of numerous needy individuals. Even after her departure from court she had continued to receive an allowance from the King of 12,000 gold louis a year, much of which she gave away. In January 1707 the King informed her that his wars were costing him so much that this year he could only give her 8000, to which she replied that while she did not mind for herself, she felt sad on behalf of the poor, who would suffer in consequence.19
As well as giving away h
er money, she immersed herself in good works, sewing shirts for paupers. All her life she had been renowned for keeping a good table, but now she ate more simply and fasted frequently. Long periods were set aside for prayer and she not only wore a hairshirt at all times but mortified her body in other ways. In 1707 she even asked her old friend the Duchesse de Noailles not to write to her with news from court as, though she had not yet reached the stage where such matters were of no interest to her, she did not want to distract her mind from higher things.20
A letter she wrote in 1704 to a female friend demonstrates the depth of her piety. She confided that she longed for God ‘to create a solitude in the bottom of my heart’ so she could meditate on her salvation at her leisure and then urged, ‘Let us go to him, my dear … Let us weep for our sins now in order not to shed one day … tears of despair’. She reminded her unnamed correspondent that they must guard against dying steeped in sin for, after death, those who had lived ‘in forgetfulness of God and the Church will regret in vain their waste of time’.21 The use of devotional language was, of course, more commonplace at the time and some might be inclined to dismiss these sentiments as worthless on the grounds that even Mme Voisin could feign piety when it suited her. It would be harsh, however, to doubt that Athénaïs’s convictions were deeply held and her evident belief that salvation was attainable provides another argument against believing that in earlier years she had dedicated herself to the devil. While she demonstrated an awareness of her sins of the flesh, these were hardly the words of a woman who had committed actions that would have put her beyond hope of redemption.
* * *
Saint-Simon claimed that, though even in old age Mme de Montespan enjoyed excellent health, she was plagued by a fear of death. Much has been made of the fact that she was also afraid of the dark. She never went to sleep without candles burning in her bedroom and to ensure that she was never left alone, she employed old ladies to sit with her and watch her as she slept. This has been attributed to her terror that Satan would come to claim the soul that had been pledged him, but this is fanciful, for she had been nervous of the dark all her life. In 1675 she mentioned in a letter that she ‘cannot sleep without light’ and it is clear that this had been the case for some time.22
The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV Page 46