Of course, Orgon lived in Paris, close to King and Court. In all likelihood, someone in Dijon or Montpellier would have been too far away for effective redress from the central government. For that reason, and also to promote a more effective rule, the whole system of delegated power was now transformed. Traditionally, each one of the French provinces was run by a governor who received a large salary and was either a member of the royal family or a great aristocrat. In times of unrest, this arrangement obviously had disastrous consequences: The governor, leaning on the resources of his province, felt quite able at best to disregard, at worst to fight, the king’s government. Even when all was peaceful, the governor naturally promoted his own interest and that of his family, friends, and followers before that of the king. Already under Richelieu, therefore, a new kind of official, the intendant, had been created, as a direct representative of the central government, but with the Fronde, the power of the intendants had faded and that of the governors increased. Now, the position of governor became, essentially, honorary. It still carried a large salary; it still entailed grand receptions in the province and all kinds of precedence, but it lost all power. Indeed, most of the governors, instead of residing at least part of the year in their province as they had once done, were expected to pay only flying visits every now and again - to open the estates, for instance, and, where necessary, to ensure that the requisite amount of tax was voted. But day-to-day effective power belonged to the intendant, appointed by the king from the increasingly large and competent body of middle-class men on which he relied more year by year. Since he had no previous connection with the province, the intendant not only carried out the king’s policies without regard to local interests, he could also ensure the freedom of the subject in his area: Even away from Paris, order was now expected.
Of course, merely ordering the governors to stay at court would not have done much good; for centuries kings had tried, and failed, to do just that. It was Louis XIV’s great achievement that he made them want to be there; indeed, he so arranged things that leaving him for any length of time became the greatest calamity imaginable.
There was a variety of reasons for this startling new development. Princes and great aristocrats were just as greedy for promotions, favors, and pensions as the rest of the world, and the king now made it plain that all these were reserved for the people he saw frequently. Absence, therefore, was quite exactly self-destructive. Then it became clear that, within this golden circle, he handed out rewards precisely as he chose, but that good behavior - i.e., unfailing and prompt obedience - would help, and finally, trading on the frivolity, snobbism, and taste for glamour to be found everywhere and always, he made the Court the one place where all these foibles could be indulged.
“Disorder,” Louis XIV wrote about France in 1661, “was everywhere, and my Court, generally, was still quite far from the condition in which I trust you will find it. The gens de qualité [the nobles], who were accustomed to continual negotiations with a minister who did not object to them, and to whom they had sometimes been a necessity, always claimed imaginary rights on whatever took their fancy. No governor of a fortress but was difficult to manage; no request but was mixed with reproaches about the past or a future discontent which was to be seen and feared; favors were demanded and extorted, expected by all if given to one man, and therefore received without gratitude, so that they were used only to wound those to whom they were refused.”96
Even as early as 1661, no one would have dared to behave with Louis XIV as they had with Mazarin, but now the Court gradually became the center of all pleasure. Already in May 1661, the Gazette de France gave an example of this reality. “On the 8th of this month,” it related, “Their Majesties, accompanied by M le prince and Mme la princesse de Condé and many other lords and ladies were entertained on the canal in barges while trumpet fanfares sounded and the King gave a splendid supper to all present. That same day, the princess of Tuscany* along with Mademoiselle† and several other persons of quality arrived at Court … and the next day accompanied Their Majesties to an outing on the same canal and to the Comédie Française.‡
“On the 10th, the King offered her a very splendid dinner … The illustrious company then went for an outing and, when they returned, were offered a ball.”97 That, perhaps, was not so unusual a schedule for the Court of a great country, but then, Louis XIII had been notoriously averse to this (or any other) kind of entertainment, and the Fronde had, to all intents and purposes, put a stop to pleasure; thus, these kinds of repeated fetes now seemed especially attractive.
Very quickly, however, Louis XIV realized that more was needed if the Court was to be a center of attraction, so he deliberately gave it glamour by fostering the very latest fashions: At this point they entailed wearing, if you were a man, a short, bolero-like jacket open over a bouffant white shirt liberally sprinkled with lace; a kind of skirt reaching to just below the knee, with stockings underneath; and clumps of ribbons everywhere - on shoulders, sleeves, cuffs, jacket, skirt, knees, ankles, and shoes. It is hard to think of a sillier-looking costume, but, as it was, the king used its constant changes to the fullest. Then, in 1662, he designed a special new coat made of blue silk or velvet embroidered with gold and silver - the justaucorps à brevet - which required written permission before it could be worn, and which therefore signaled that its owner was high in the royal favor. And, naturally, he gave increasingly frequent and splendid entertainments which culminated in the famed Carrousel of 1662.
“There are some nations,” Louis XIV noted, “where the majesty of kings consists for the great part in not allowing themselves to be seen* and this may be reasonable among minds accustomed to servitude, people who can only be governed by fear and terror; but such is not the genius of our Frenchmen …
“These social pleasures which give the people at Court a proper familiarity with us touches and charms them more than one can say. On their side, the people enjoy the show.”98
The king was quite right; just as, today, some of the queen of England’s popularity is no doubt due to the splendid spectacle she occasionally provides, so, too, in seventeenth-century France the middle and lower classes, who, after all had neither radio nor television nor stereos and virtually never went to the theater, loved a public and lavish display; it flattered them as well: There was a good deal to be said for having the most dazzling Court in Europe, especially when taxes had just been cut. It is also important to remember that royal parks and palaces were open to all decently dressed persons and that a good deal of the show often took place outdoors where anyone at all could see it. When the President of the United States gives a state dinner, only the 200 or so participants get to see it and the White House. When Louis XIV gave a ball, many of his non-aristocratic subjects were able to watch it.
This opportunity was even truer of the carrousel because it took place in the large open space which separated the Palace of the Tuileries from the Louvre. A carefully rehearsed tourney, it involved various horseback competitions, but here the sport was only a pretext: What really mattered was the splendor of the costumes. The various teams were each supposed to represent a half-mythical and distant land: There were Persians, Americans, Turks, all of whom were French and wholly unfamiliar with the countries they were supposed to represent. In fact, that, too, was a pretext for sumptuous display. The king headed one “nation,” Monsieur another; the duc de Guise, the head of the younger branch of the House of Lorraine, another still. And, most important, all the participants, human and equine, shone with finery, whether red and gold like the king or green and gold like Monsieur. Huge bouquets of ostrich plumes waved from everywhere, the costumes, saddles and horse trappings were made of the costliest fabrics, lavishly embroidered in gold, silver, and precious stones. The principals glittered with diamonds and were followed by numerous pages wearing their colors. It was all as splendid a spectacle as anyone could remember seeing; it was also high politics.
Clearly, a great noble engaged in polishin
g up his horsemanship and planning his costume was too busy to think of plotting against the government; he was also safely ensconced in Paris, far from his estates and his sources of power and income, and therefore markedly more dependent on the king. Then, too, the trappings needed for the carrousel were ruinously expensive - as Louis XIV knew very well. Before deciding to hold that great festivity, in fact, he had consulted Colbert, and been reassured: In the end, the minister said, the Treasury would make more money on the seventeenth-century equivalent of sales taxes than it would spend on the carrousel because of the great influx of tourists into Paris, and, as usual, he was right. What was true for the king, however, was utterly false for everyone else.
Because the Court was more brilliant, because every new ball, every new reception, required increasingly splendid clothes, it suddenly became far more expensive to spend time there. There were also other sources of expense: You could hardly arrive at the Louvre or the Tuileries in a shabby carriage, or with an insufficient number of servants; liveries were costly too; and then, at Court, much time was spent playing cards for very high stakes, so that people sometimes lost half a year’s income in just one night.
Of course, they could always go off to their country estate, but because the Court was rapidly becoming the very center of fashion, that was hardly considered a pleasant choice. If, on the other hand, they stayed on, they were likely to spend far more than they could afford. Rather than cut down and lose face, most nobles then went into debt; eventually the debts, having grown, became a problem; and then the obvious remedy consisted in going to the king - who could give you a sum of money or a pension or an office which carried a salary. The aim, then, was to please his majesty, and that required constant attendance at Court - where life was so terribly expensive. Thus, in a very short time, and altogether peacefully, Louis XIV had begun to domesticate the most dangerous class of his subjects.
He was helped in this tempering by the glamour which, increasingly, surrounded him. It was not only that he was young, athletic, good-looking, and very sufficiently intelligent: There radiated from him the conviction that he was different in essence from other men. “Our coronation,” he wrote, “does not make us kings but it displays our royalty to the people and makes it more august in us.”99 That was a telling remark: Kings, Louis XIV thought, were especially chosen by God to be his representatives on earth; they owed their crowns, therefore, not to a mere ceremony, like the Coronation, but to the very fact of being born, and their special relationship to the Divinity began when they first drew breath. A number of consequences flowed from this belief.
“We lack not only justice but prudence,” the king went on, “when we lack veneration for Him whose mere lieutenants we are; our submission to Him corresponds to that which is due to us. Armies, councils, all human activities, would be insufficient to keep us on the throne if every man thought he had as much right to it as ourselves.”100 In an age when men differed as to how God should be worshiped, but never thought that there might not be any God at all, this stand was very strong, indeed. Disobedience to the king became a sin, to be punished in this world but also in the next, an even more unpleasant prospect; it also stood to reason that God’s representative lived on an altogether different plane from the rest of humanity. It was not enough, either, to be a member of the royal family (although, of course, it helped): Only the king was semidivine, and human fragility being what it was, you could never tell who would eventually succeed him since his son, for instance, might die before he did.
No doubt Louis XIV’s extraordinary majesty was due in great part to these beliefs, but he also knew how to temper what might otherwise have been a frightening distance with the most thoroughgoing politeness and with a taste for pleasure which enlivened the Court, so that the result was an attractive and cheerful grandeur. But no one ever forgot the respect they owed the king.
“The Court, which was attended by a great many, abounded in pleasures,” Mme de Motteville wrote. “The prince de Condé held the first rank after Monsieur and the King felt great consideration for him … That prince showed that he was as great by his humility and his urbanity as he had been through his victories …
“Several times, the King, the Queens, Monsieur, and Madame being in a gilded boat shaped like a galley where, in the coolness of the day, Their Majesties were having a light meal, Monsieur le prince followed them in his quality of grand maître* with so much respect, and so easy a look that it was impossible to see him behaving thus … without thanking God for the current peace …
“We could see the duc de Beaufort,† that leader of the Importants‡ and of the Fronde, the former king of the halle, eagerly following the King, his master, and trying to please him.
“Besides the princesses and the ladies who attended the Court, the maids-in-waiting§ of the two Queens and of Madame played an important role, and some of them were very beautiful. There were frequent balls, plays, carriage rides, and hunts. In a word, no amusement was wanting. The different courts and gardens of Fontainebleau seemed like enchanted palaces and gardens.”101
Multiplied entertainments and a superb decor were an important part of Court life, of course, but they were not enough. Wit and lively conversation became a necessity to fill the long, leisurely hours: Even if the king worked hard, most of the courtiers had literally nothing to do. And, as was only right when the monarch was young and strongly attracted to the opposite sex, beautiful women were greatly sought after.
That most of the maid’s-in-waiting should have been pretty was not really surprising; that the Court should have attracted many aristocratic beauties was also perfectly normal; far more surprising was the transformation immediately noticed in a young woman with whom, only a few years ago, the king had not wanted to dance: Henrietta Stuart, now the bride of the king’s brother, Philippe, duc d’Orléans, and generally known as Madame.
“The Princess of England was rather tall: she was very graceful and her figure, which was not free of faults,* did not then seem as spoiled as it actually was; but her whole person, although it was not shapely, was still altogether attractive because of her manner and her charm. She had a very delicate and very white complexion, mixed with a natural blush similar to the rose and the jasmine. Her eyes were small but brilliant and inviting; her nose was not ugly; her lips were very red and her teeth as white and as fine as anyone could wish; but her face was too long, and she was too thin, which seemed to indicate that her beauty would not last.
“She dressed and arranged her hair in the most becoming way … and already showed much intelligence and reason.”102 In fact, although she was only seventeen in 1661, she had that kind of mysterious attraction which is all the more potent for being indefinable; she knew how to entertain, converse, and amuse; she was full of the liveliest spirit, and the king, who was, after all married to a dull, unattractive woman, promptly fell in love with her.
Indeed, they seemed made for each other: both young, both brilliant in different ways, both fond of the same pleasures, both royal. Of course, there was one awkward little fact: Madame was the king’s sister-in-law.* And Monsieur, who soon caught on to his wife’s inclination, was not at all happy - a development which became public with great rapidity since he was never one to keep his feelings to himself.
The king was not very tall, but he was imposing; Monsieur was very short and not infrequently lacking in dignity: Shrill rages combined with extreme frivolity made him vulnerable to criticism, as, in short order, did his private life. It was not only that he was perhaps too fond of sumptuous clothes, perfumes, and jewelry, or that he was fascinated by women’s fashions and gossip; he was also given to falling in love with handsome but undeserving young men, who were generally unfaithful to him (often with women); and all this intrigue happened in the constant glare of total publicity. Clearly, when Anne of Austria and Mazarin, together, had decided to make sure that Philippe would never behave like his uncle, the late duc d’Orléans, they had done a good job. No one could
imagine Monsieur leading a civil war against his brother.
In spite of all that, however, the prince was not lacking in good qualities. He was quick, intelligent, and witty; he knew how to be amiable and welcoming while retaining his dignity; he was unquestionably kind; he had a sharp eye for painting, architecture, and decor and understood just how to give a successful party; since, unlike the king, he was only marginally sensitive to feminine charms, however, he quite failed to fall in love with his wife, a fact of which she was very well aware.
That the young Madame should have been attracted to the king was, therefore, quite natural; the problem was that Monsieur soon noticed and started to behave like the most conventional of jealous husbands, Even worse, after a little delay - she was none too quick - the queen caught on as well, and though she knew better than to make scenes, she made her unhappiness very plain.
That, in itself, was not likely to deter the king, who thought himself above the common law in this respect as well. Marie Thérése, he readily acknowledged, had certain rights: to be treated with the respect due a queen of France, to be slept with at regular intervals, but he felt perfectly free to be unfaithful to her as frequently as he chose.* Whether, in fact, his liaison with Madame was actually consummated is not known, although it is difficult to see why it would not have been; the queen, for her part, certainly thought that it had. In any event, Madame’s attraction soon turned out to be more intellectual than physical. Already as a young man, Louis XIV loved intelligent, witty women: That is unquestionably the side of Madame that appealed to him most.
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