“The King did not want to see the water of the pipe to Trianon because … the rainwater silted up the wells.”144 This supervision was all typical, as were Colbert’s ceaseless exhortations to his son because his questions were not always answered the very same day.
That Louis XIV took the most personal interest in Versailles is beyond question: Every single detail was first approved on the plan, then checked once it had been carried out, and often modified. As a result, the palace was almost as much his work as it was the architects’ and the designer’s - so much so that the building of Versailles became an essential part of the king’s life - but first, the reasons behind the whole huge enterprise require elucidating.
Far from being the result of the king’s own taste for building, as had been the case with the construction of Louis XIV’s ancestors, Versailles is, in fact, both the embodiment of a policy and the machinery through which it can be applied; far from being frivolous or self-indulgent, it is nothing less than an act of state. That it should also be so beautiful is one consequence of its purpose for which we have reason to be grateful. For, essentially, the palace is a golden trap in which to catch the princes and the great aristocrats.
Already in 1662, the Court’s increasing splendor was doing just that, but clearly, occasional festivities were not enough. The king’s goal was to attract the once dangerous grandees, not for a few weeks, or even months every year, but for good. That, in itself, would sever them from their power bases in the provinces and keep them where they could be watched: The posts were controlled by the government and all interesting mail opened, read, and reported on. Further, the expenses inherent in the ever glamorous life of the Court were likely to put the nobles even deeper in the king’s dependence: Once their income proved insufficient, they would have to rely on pensions and salaries as a supplement, and that implied being where the king saw and remembered them. Naturally, Louis XIV was careful to emphasize the necessity of actual attendance at Court by coldly saying “I don’t know him” of people whom he had not seen in a while.
Still, constant presence had to be made bearable, so the setting and the entertainments must be magnificent; most important, the king had to have a palace large enough to house this suddenly much larger Court. Then, too, the increased size of the Court, and the permanent presence of its members, meant that the etiquette could become both more all-encompassing and more complicated. By multiplying the positions around himself, the queen, and the royal family, Louis XIV could catch many more great nobles; by exciting constant jealousy between the different officeholders and the different ranks of the aristocracy, he could also ensure that the energies which had once provoked civil wars would be spent in quarreling about the right to a stool or the order of entrance into the royal bedroom.
As if that were not enough, the very existence of the palace bred yet a new kind of preoccupation for the Court. For the first time, there was room enough to house, if not quite every courtier, at least most of them, so the competition for apartments was fierce, and more than one duke had to make do with a small, dark, all-purpose room. Not being housed at Versailles, however, was considered to be catastrophic: Since only constant attendance on his majesty put one in a position to ask for favors, and since a prerequisite for this presence was a lodging, all of a sudden even the richest of grandees were glad to exchange their own vast châteaux and sumptuous townhouses for a garret; although, from the 1680s on, they began to build themselves residences in the town of Versailles.
None of this Court life would have been possible without Versailles. Of course, seen in that light, its cost becomes insignificant; better still, it is very much more than just a successful political machine. Here, for the first time, we see the enriching of a country by its buildings. The castles built by François I or Henri IV, the palazzi ordered by the Farnese or the Orsini, were all expressions of personal achievement. Versailles belonged to France as much as the king, as was made plain by the fact that, from the very beginning, its state apartments and gardens were open to all decently dressed visitors; it is a measure of the king’s success that the palace’s power of attraction has only grown with the centuries.
Nor is it merely a question of splendor: Without question, Versailles is also a major artistic achievement. Not only was a new style born there, it also remained a center of artistic growth throughout the reign and set new and dazzling standards. Magnificence, of course, was ever the order of the day; marble, gold, and silver were everywhere, but, far more important, the quality of every visible element of the decor reached unprecedented heights, so that the rest of Europe, henceforth and until the Revolution, looked to France for guidance in all artistic matters. Indeed, from Caserta to Schönbrunn, from Aranjuez to Tsarskoe Selo, the progeny of Versailles is scattered all over the continent.
As it is, what we see today is only the latter Versailles, version number three, so to speak, and precious little of it at that, since it was modified throughout the eighteenth century, then, more drastically still in the nineteenth.
It all started with Louis XIII’s hunting lodge, slightly embellished and enlarged in the early 1660s; then, in 1668, Le Vau was commissioned to design a new façade on the park side which would greatly expand the palace. At this stage, however, only what is now the central part of the building was built: Neither of the two vast lateral wings was yet contemplated, and where the Hall of Mirrors is today there was an open terrace. After Le Vau’s death, in 1670, his plans were carried out by François d’Orbay; and then, in 1676, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, at the king’s order, drew up a whole new palace which, incorporating the existing building, made it immensely larger. And although there have been later additions - the Chapel, the Opera, the two outermost wings in the Cour d’Honneur - from then on, seen from the outside, Versailles looked much as it does today.
Of course, the interior changed as well, but already in the seventies, splendid enfilades existed in which the king held court. That in itself helped modify the very nature of the monarchy. Even before Versailles, of course, the king had stressed that he stood above all other men. Bossuet, that inspired orator and obedient subject, made it all very clear already in 1662: “[Kings] are gods, although they die, but their authority does not,” he said in a sermon on the duties of kings, adding, a little later: “The royal throne is not the throne of a man but the very throne of God.”145 Still, had the king been tiny, undignified, or reclusive, these comparisons would have seemed absurd.
In this case, however, fate was generous: Even as a young man, Louis XIV was astonishingly majestic; he looked good in public and had perfected a way of never granting or refusing a request on the spot “Je verrai” (I will see), he always said - which prevented unpleasant moments. He knew just how to speak to everyone, how to be polite without being condescending or short. And most important, he was quite happy to live out his life in public. Except when he was working with his ministers, or actually having sex with one of his mistresses, therefore, he lived out his entire life in the open, and ordered his occupations so that they followed an invariable schedule.
“Never was a prince less ruled by others,” Primi Visconti, an Italian observer noted in 1673. “He wants to know everything: through his ministers the affairs of state; through the présidents those of the Parlements; through the judges the least little things; through his favorite ladies the latest fashions; in a word, there seldom occurs, in the course of a day, an event of which he is not informed and there are few people whose names and habits he does not know. He has a penetrating glance, knows everyone’s most private business, and, once he has seen a man or heard about him, he always remembers him.
“Besides that he is very orderly in all his actions. He always rises at eight, remains at the Council from ten to twelve-thirty, at which time he goes to mass, always together with the Queen and his family. Because of his intense and persistent desire to control all the state’s business, he has become very clever … He has an extraordinary talent and can often resolv
e problems which neither the ministers nor their secretaries could understand … At one, after having heard the mass, he visits his mistresses* until two, and then he invariably dines with the Queen in public. During the rest of the afternoon, he either hunts or goes for a walk; most of the time, he holds another Council when he returns. From nightfall until about ten, he talks to the ladies, or plays cards, or goes to the theater, or attends a ball. At eleven, after his supper, he visits his mistresses again. He always sleeps with the Queen …
“In public, he is full of gravity, and quite different from the way he is in private. Having several times found myself in his bedroom with other courtiers, I noticed that if the door chances to be opened, or if he comes out [from his private apartments] he immediately changes his attitude and his face takes on another expression, as if he were walking on to a stage: in a word, he always knows how to be a king … If one wants something, one must ask him directly, and not others. He listens to all, takes the memoranda, and always answers ‘I will see’ in a graceful and majestic way …
“He is helped by a robust state of health and a strong constitution … It is a fine show to see him coming out of the castle with the bodyguards, the carriages, the horses, the courtiers, the footmen, and a multitude of people in a mass running all around him … The King is almost always alone in his carriage. Sometimes, however, when he goes hunting or walking, he brings a few courtiers with him.”146
Other men were kings; Louis XIV was monarchy incarnate, in an age where, England always excepted, it was an acknowledged idea that the celestial hierarchy was mirrored on earth at the royal courts. And while increasingly throughout the seventies, the Court resided at Versailles, the king moved through his day as majestically, as predictably, as the sun through the heavens. Still, although he was incomparably above even the closest members of his family, he was surrounded by lesser stars, and they, too, helped set what was to become a universal pattern for the Court of a great king.
The queen, in her way, was as unchanging as her husband; she was, however, a good deal less impressive, and, of course, completely powerless. Louis XIV unquestionably respected her; he did his duty as her husband with great frequency, a fact we know because, invariably, the next morning Marie Thérèse would be seen to pray much longer than usual, no doubt in order to thank the divinity. Her amusements were few - attending religious services, eating, surrounding herself with dwarfs and small dogs - but they satisfied her, and she would have been perfectly happy had it not been for the king’s mistresses, whom she always, and ineffectively, hated. Still, she did just what was expected of her and always behaved in public with perfect dignity.
That had not been true of the second lady at Court, Madame. As the sixties passed into the seventies, the princess had become all too aware that the king was no longer interested in her; she retaliated by making her husband’s life as miserable as she could. There were constant scenes, after which Monsieur, never given to hiding his feelings, would lament his fate before one and all. Then, not only was Madame involved in intrigues with various factions at Court, she was also, most probably, unfaithful to her husband. In 1669 and early 1670, her position improved because Louis XIV used her as an intermediary between himself and her brother, King Charles II of England; it was, in fact, largely through her good offices that the Treaty of Dover, which linked the two nations, was concluded. Being needed, she also suddenly had a greater weight at Court, and the king, who before had most often sided with Monsieur, now started to defend his sister-in-law.
Here, once again, was a demonstration of Louis XIV’s apparent remoteness from normal human feeling. Not only was Monsieur kept absolutely in the dark as to his wife’s activities - he was notoriously indiscreet - but also Madame, in whom Christian charity was not the most visible of virtues, now prepared to make his life a living hell. Everything, of course, was under the king’s detached but all-knowing eye, and when the poor duc complained about it, he found that he could expect no help: As long as Madame was useful, she could behave just as she pleased.
That was the situation when on the afternoon of June 29, 1670, Madame, who was strolling on the terrace of St. Cloud, asked for, and drank, a glass of chicory water. Within an hour, she was seized by the most dreadful stomach pains; she was quickly carried to her bed, but the pains only got worse and were soon followed by convulsions; within hours, amid the most excruciating suffering, the princess breathed her last.
“Poison was immediately suspected,” the austere Ormesson noted, “because of all the circumstances of the illness and because of the bad relations between Madame and Monsieur which Monsieur, with reason, found offensive. That evening, the body was opened [for the autopsy] in the presence of the English Ambassador and several physicians of his choice, some of them English, as well as the King’s physicians. They reported that Madame’s body was severely diseased; one of her lungs adhered to the ribs and was completely spoiled, the liver was all dried up, bloodless, and with a great quantity of bile filling the body and the stomach, from which the conclusion was that no poison was used: if it had been, the stomach would have been pierced and spoiled.”147 The physicians’ report notwithstanding, the rumor that Madame had been poisoned, probably on her husband’s order, continued to spread, so much so that it has not completely died down to this day. In fact, no such supposition is necessary to explain her death.
Tuberculosis had long been a scourge of the English royal family; not so many years before, one of Henrietta’s brothers, Henry, duke of Gloucester, had died of it, and the description of the state of her lungs is in itself eloquent. That she died of peritonitis, probably of tubercular origin, is the most likely explanation, although acute appendicitis is also a possibility. In any event, Madame had long been in very bad health, coughing, losing weight until she was only skin and bones. The rumor that she was poisoned was, of course, provoked by the startling rapidity of her death, but in truth, she had already been wasting away for a long time. It should also be said, in all fairness, that Monsieur, in spite of his quick temper, would have been incapable of killing a fly, let alone his wife. There is a great distance between complaints and murder; for Monsieur, that distance was impassable.
“Many people, at Court and in Paris, much regretted Madame’s death,” Ormesson added. It is easy to see why: Odiously selfish as she could be on occasion, Madame radiated the sort of charm we have come to expect of movie stars, and she was also lively, intelligent, interested - a striking contrast to the dull, limited queen. That, perhaps was what spurred Bossuet when he came to write her funeral oration; what is at any rate certain is that he wrote one of the finest texts in the French language, one which has been quoted from that day to this one.
It is, of course, impossible to reproduce it in full: Bossuet, after all, spoke for over an hour, but even a few brief quotes will show the heights eloquence could reach in the seventeenth century.
“O vanity! O emptiness! O mortals ignorant of their own destinies! Could she have believed it ten months ago?* And you, Messieurs, could you have thought, when she shed so many tears in this place, that she would so soon gather you here to mourn her? … No, after what you have seen, health is but a word, life but a dream, glory mere appearance, graces and pleasures a dangerous amusement only … All that fortune and a high birth, and also the greatest qualities of mind can do to raise a princess high was brought together, then annihilated in her …
“O disastrous night! O fearful night in which, suddenly, like a thunderclap was heard that astonishing news, Madame is dying, Madame is dead … Everywhere cries resound; everywhere suffering, despair, and the image of death are present. The King, the Queen, Monsieur, the Court, the People, all are stunned, all are desperate … In most men, changes come slowly and death usually prepares them for its last stroke, but, like the flowers of the fields, Madame passed from morning to night.”148
The Court, however, was too self-involved to be really moved by this admirable flight of eloquence: Madame was mourned onl
y by Charles II; as for the king, after shedding a river of tears, he forgot her before the week was out, and negotiations were started to find Monsieur a new wife. Indeed, all observers noted that this lack of feeling was typical: People were useful only as long as they lived; once dead, someone else had to be courted; Louis himself, after all, had long since stopped loving Madame.
By the early seventies, in fact, he had also just about stopped loving La Vallière, although she was still the maîtresse en titre. “The duchesse de La Vallière’s influence was greatly diminished,” Visconti noted, “and the marquise de Montespan was high in favor … She had fair hair, large azure-blue eyes, a well-shaped aquiline nose, a small, red mouth, very fine teeth, in a word a perfect face. As for her body, she was of medium height and well-proportioned, but when I first saw her, she had already put on weight. Her greatest charm was a special grace, wit, and way of turning a joke which so pleased La Vallière that she could not bear to be parted from her and was always praising her to the King … which made him curious to know her better.”149
That was soon done: Mme de Montespan and the king were clearly made for each other; just as La Vallière had appealed to a younger, less emancipated monarch, so Montespan, this splendid creature whose appetites matched Louis’s own, was the perfect mistress for the next stage of the reign. There was a problem, though: Mme de Montespan was married, and it was not only that the king’s double adultery seemed far more sinful than an affair with the unmarried La Vallière: The husband would not cooperate, much to every one’s surprise. After all, as Visconti noted in 1674, “there is not a single lady of quality who does not yearn to become the King’s mistress. Many women, whether married or not, have told me that to be loved by one’s monarch was no offense to their husbands, to their father or even to God himself … and the worst is that the families, the mothers, the fathers, and even certain husbands would be proud of this.”150
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