Louis XIV

by Olivier Bernier

  This circumstance was especially true in a court filled with young and pretty women whose greatest ambition was to become the king’s mistress; sure enough, within a few weeks, Louis XIV fell in love with a blonde whose dazzling complexion and lithe figure were enhanced by her youth and obvious willingness. “ Mlle de Fontanges … was tall, with a good body and very pretty but, as she was fair-haired, those who were jealous of her said she was a redhead, for there is in France a prejudice according to which red-haired women are nasty and smell bad. Red-haired men are also supposed to be nasty, but they save themselves by wearing a wig,”192 the Italian Visconti noted.

  Not only was Mlle de Fontanges a perfectly genuine blonde, she was also quiet, pliable and not terribly bright - the very opposite, in fact, of Mme de Montespan, whose legs, according to a sharp-eyed observer, had now reached the girth of an average man and whose temper was worse than ever; then, too, the king had reason to suspect she was slipping him a variety of love potions which were giving him fits of dizziness. There was also that old matter of the double adultery, made more annoying still by M. de Montespan’s provocative behavior. Colbert, the indispensable man as always, was set to watch over him. The result was an abundant correspondence of which the following is a fair sample. From Colbert to the king: “I received yesterday, Sire, Your Majesty’s letter of the seventeenth and will carry out punctually Your Majesty’s orders as regards M. de Montespan. Upon which you must know that some three or four years ago, when you ordered me to see to it that a suit he had before the Parlement be judged so that he would no longer have any reason or pretext to remain in Paris, I carried out Your Majesty’s order. The suit was tried and I believe he left.

  “About two weeks ago, M. de Montespan came up to me and asked me to recommend to M. de Novion a suit he was engaged in, and the outcome of which he awaited before retiring to his province, but I did not do so because I did not think I should be mixed into his business without orders. If Your Majesty thought it necessary to thus press the said M. de Novion, perhaps he [Montespan] would then leave.”193 This letter was written on May 28, 1678. The orders were no doubt given, but on June 15, the king was writing Colbert: “I hear that Montespan is talking indiscreetly. He is a madman and you will please me by having him closely followed … I know that Montespan threatened he would come and see his wife. As he is quite capable of doing so, and as the consequences of this are to be feared, I rely on you to prevent him from appearing. Do not forget the details of this business and above all let him leave Paris as soon as possible.”194 It was not only that Montespan was quite likely to barge into his wife’s apartment and make a dreadful scene: Even in Paris, he behaved as scandalously as possible, and obviously none of this fit in with the image of Olympian detachment the king was anxious to preserve.

  There was no such drawback with Mlle de Fontanges, but then again, she lacked those intellectual qualities Louis apparently found indispensable. So from the first, the Court watched for signs that the affair would not last - especially since another star was rising on the horizon. Already in 1675 it was noticed that the king liked to spend time with the lady in question, nor, given his habits, did anyone doubt that she had become his mistress. Indeed, from the moment in January of that year when he had created her marquise de Maintenon, the gossips had watched the two with great care.

  Still, the new marquise was not likely ever to become really important. Her title, after all, was not unconnected with her functions as governess of the king’s illegitimate children. Real Enfants de France, born of the queen, could only be watched over by a duchess; given the way Louis XIV was beginning to feel about his bastards, it was clear that they, too, should have a titled lady in attendance. Then, Mme de Maintenon was Mme de Montespan’s protégée; the two ladies were friends, partly because they were both brilliantly intelligent and each appreciated the other’s mind. Besides that, Mme de Maintenon was unquestionably devoted to the children placed under her care; the more so, no doubt, because she was wholly unattached. All this dedication was duly appreciated by the king, but the notion that the former widow Scarron could ever play a major role at the most splendid Court in the world was simply laughable.

  It was, in fact, the very modesty of the then Mme Scarron’s position which had led to her being chosen as governess of Mme de Montespan’s growing brood of royal children. Because of the double adultery, the king had, at first, been anxious to keep these children a secret, but then, times had changed. The children had become légitimés; they were seen at Court, publicly acknowledged as what they were even by the queen; their governess had also come out of the shadows.

  She was, as Louis XIV was quick to appreciate, altogether an exceptional woman. The abbé de Choisy, who liked her, gave this picture of her: “She had looked after the education of M. le duc du Maine* which had given her a thousand occasions to show what she could do, her wit, her judgment, her straightforwardness, her piety and all the other natural virtues which do not always win hearts as fast as beauty, but which settle their conquests on a much sounder, almost indestructible base. She was no longer very young but her eyes were so alive, so brilliant, and there was such sparkling wit in her expression when she spoke, that it was difficult to see her often without feeling an inclination for her. The King, accustomed since his childhood to being surrounded with women, was delighted to find one who only spoke about virtue; he did not fear that people would say she ruled him; he had seen that she was undemanding and incapable of abusing her close connection with him.”195

  In 1675, when she began to be noticed, Mme de Maintenon was forty - well past maturity in seventeenth-century terms - but she looked very much younger than her age and was, indeed, highly attractive. To her intellectual qualities, she added one that she had learned in the course of her difficult life, one the king prized especially highly: absolute discretion. And the fact that she behaved with the greatest modesty helped put her in contrast with the flamboyant Mme de Montespan. Even her appearance made her unique: In a court where women dressed in sumptuous, brightly colored materials and were covered with jewels, she never wore anything but black.

  Finally, she was not only pious but intelligently so and capable both of sustaining a lengthy theological discussion and of making it lively: For a monarch who was genuinely pious himself, and who was increasingly worried about the sins entailed by his liaison with Mme de Montespan, this attraction, too, was powerful. As for the lady’s less attractive qualities - a certain hypocrisy, a definite thirst for power, a tendency to complain at enormous length - they were not yet in evidence; thus what the king saw, as he came from one of Mme de Montespan’s frequent scenes, was an attractive, intelligent, and serious woman with whom he could have a real conversation.

  That he did so is the best proof that he cared more for merit than birth or position; for Mme de Maintenon’s career had been checkered in the extreme. She was born in a family, the d’Aubignés, who belonged to the very small nobility. Her father, who was essentially a crook, had gone from jail to jail so that the little Françoise was raised by relatives, first in faraway Martinique, then in the Poitou, where she served as maid-companion to her cousins. Any son of reputable marriage was obviously out of the question since she was absolutely penniless: Clearly, she would have to earn her living as a companion to some noble lady or governess to her children.

  Had she also been plain, or dull, that, no doubt, would have been her fate, but from the first, she was extremely attractive and wonderfully bright. When she followed her aunt to Paris, she quickly gained the reputation of being excellent company, and then, in 1652, at the age of seventeen, she launched herself into the most unexpected and the most grotesque of marriages. Paul Scarron, her groom, was a well-known comic poet, the author of the first burlesque novel in the French language, and a man of culture and wit. He was much appreciated in Paris and counted many nobles among his friends, but he was also, at the age of forty-two, utterly crippled by rheumatism, unable to walk even a few steps by himself
, and in constant pain. As a result, he looked very much older than his age and was impotent though by no means uninterested in sex.

  There was every reason why the marriage should have been disastrous; in fact, it was highly successful. The new Mme Scarron liked her husband and admired his talent while he, on his side, enjoyed his wife’s looks and intelligence. She made a comfortable (but not at all luxurious) home for him and in short order found herself at the head of a salon frequented not just by intellectuals, but also by a few dukes and some of the great ladies who ruled Paris society. This position was a not unenviable one, and Mme Scarron made the most of it. Unfortunately, the seventeenth century was not a good time for authors, financially, at least: They depended on patronage for their living, and during the years of the Scarrons’ marriage, the Fronde’s aftereffects dried up that source of income. Still, when the poet finally died in 1660, his widow was so well esteemed that Anne of Austria, who knew her to be utterly penniless awarded her a pension.

  There followed a period of her life that we know almost nothing about, and then Mme Scarron was recruited to take care of the king’s illegitimate children. Her antecedents were such, therefore, that she could be no menace to Mme de Montespan, a fact of which that lady was very well aware and which no doubt figured largely in the two women’s friendship. Facts of that nature, however, have a way of changing, and while his feelings for Mlle de Fontanges were not affected by those he entertained for Mme de Maintenon, the king nonetheless was seen to pay more and more attention to the governess. By 1679, Mme de Montespan was beginning to find herself in the same position as La Vallière some ten years earlier. Of course, she fought back - with tears and scenes, then, more startlingly, with religion. The sight of the marquise visiting churches at odd hours of the day and spouting the scriptures must have seemed irresistibly comic at first; there can be no doubt that it was all a maneuver to regain the king’s love by preempting Mme de Maintenon’s favorite topic. Oddly enough, it worked, if in an unexpected way: It did not gain her the king, but she did become genuinely pious.

  Before she settled for regular attendance at mass, however, Mme de Montespan had tried a few less orthodox methods. In due course, the king found out what they were, and the knowledge offended and frightened him: Neither the marquise nor, indeed, France was quite what he had thought them.

  * The grands appartements were the state apartments and included the king’s bedroom; the petits appartements were the king’s private rooms.

  † The Escalier des Ambassadeurs; it was torn down in 1751.

  * Mmes de La Vallière and de Montespan.

  * When her mother’s funeral service was celebrated in the same cathedral.

  * Colbert’s country house near Versailles.

  † The large and splendid château which belonged to Colbert’s son-in-law, the due de Chevreuse.

  * A double gift was involved: the permission to be grand master and the price of the office. All Court offices were venal: The king chose their holders, but they had to pay their predecessor or his heir a very large sum.

  * That admirable group was repositioned in an open kiosk when the grotto was torn down in the late 1680s, then transferred on Marie Antoinette’s orders to her own grotto in the garden of the Petit Trianon. It is there today.

  * Charles II was only thirteen.

  * Midnight suppers.

  * Without the royal arms on the side panel, that is.

  * Mme de Montespan’s sister.

  † Because each tried to precede the other.

  ‡ Far from being “a certain poet,” Benserade was one of the king’s favorite writers and the author of much occasional verse read during Court festivities.

  * The duc du Maine, who was born on March 31, 1670, was the king’s favorite among his illegitimate children.

  France, in the late 1670s, was not unlike a volcano after an eruption: A cold crust had formed over the lava, and the ash had settled, but underneath, the magma continued to boil; in the same way, while the king had apparently imposed his new order and transformed the very spirit of the nation, the disruptive forces he had defeated lived on; only, now, they were hidden.

  Still, their effects became noticeable when too many people began to die suddenly and unexpectedly. In short order, Louis XIV learned that the entire top layer of French society was indulging in a variety of criminal practices.

  The aristocracy, after all, had long enriched itself illegitimately by starting civil wars which it was then bribed to stop. Under Louis XIV, the king’s favor, that source of potentially endless benefits, had to be deserved rather than conquered. Then, too, life had become enormously more expensive; elder sons, who once had put in only brief appearances at Court, now spent most of their life there and greatly resented having to wait for the day when, at their fathers’ death, they would succeed to the family fortune.

  Even among those closest to the king, the old instincts for rapine remained: The close confinement of life at Versailles, where Louis XIV now spent more and more of his time, exacerbated the rivalries between the different clans. The death of a rival was always a boon; how much more convenient if it could be procured at will. And when love faded, how gratifying if something could be done about it, even if that lover was the king.

  Some of the means used to rectify these various situations were eminently practical, as murder can be as long as it remains undiscovered; others, deemed to be equally sure, relied on old superstitions which were still widely believed to be fact. French civilization, at the end of the seventeenth century, seemed to be one of the most advanced in Europe. The power of reason, the need for demonstrable proof, extolled by Descartes among others, had apparently been accepted. And while religion remained strong, it was based on faith and works, not on the accretion of pagan rituals and demonic beliefs which had marred it at the end of the Middle Ages - or so the most eminent bishops, men like Bossuet and Fénelon, claimed.

  In fact, old beliefs die hard, especially when they appear to offer convenient shortcuts. As recently as the beginning of the century, James I of England had written a book, the Daemonologie, in which the power of witches was taken as fact. Besides, if a soul was such a very valuable commodity, it stood to reason that the Devil, in whose existence everyone still believed, would pay a high price for it, so it was a trade: hell in the hereafter against instant and easy success in this life.

  A need will always create a service. If rich, powerful people needed the help of the Devil, then others were bound to come forward as intermediaries. And if the continued existence of a rich but penny-pinching father was a major inconvenience, then means were found to get rid of him. So it was that arsenic and black magic came together to perform all these necessary funcdons.

  That it should have been so, given the age-old nature of the French upper classes, is perhaps not very surprising; murder, rape, and looting in a civil war were hardly more moral, but they had always been perfectly acceptable. Now, similar activities were used more discreetly, and often on relatives instead of rivals, though the basic principle remained the same. But that persistence of the bad old ways was just what the king thought he had ended. In 1677, he began to discover that instead of the well-ordered society he had been trying to establish, greed, corruption, and crime were everywhere.

  It all began, apparently, with a single, isolated criminal affair. The marquise de Brinvilliers, daughter of a rich, upper-middle-class father whose inheritance she awaited eagerly, was married to a man of whom she had grown quite tired. That, in itself, was a fairly normal situation, but this time, there was a difference. The latest and most entrancing of Mme de Brinvilliers’s lovers was a chemist called Sainte-Croix, and he eventually offered to provide her with a powder which would dispatch both husband and father.

  The marquise, who was nothing if not practical, listened carefully, explored all possible objections, then decided to make sure the powder would work as predicted: It was one thing to kill her relatives while making it look as if they were
dying of some illness, quite another to have them survive and suspect. So she looked around for convenient subjects, and under the guise of charity, found them easily. The Hôtel Dieu, the main hospital in Paris, was run by the Church but depended on private help; in 1676, people noticed that Mme de Brinvilliers seemed to spend much of her time helping the sick, caring for them and feeding them. She was apparently unlucky, though: Most of her patients died within a very few weeks.

  Having thus made sure that the powder - in fact, a variety of arsenic - worked well over time, the marquise then started using it on her family. In one case, that of her husband, she changed her mind after she had already been poisoning him for a while, gave him antidotes and let him live, but several other relatives were duly dispatched, with no one the wiser. There seemed no reason why she should ever be caught, in fact, since she was careful to give her victims small, repeated doses of arsenic, so that their decline simply looked like a normal illness. But then, Sainte-Croix was found dead in his laboratory, poisoned, apparently, by the accidental breaking of a glass retort. His connection to Mme de Brinvilliers was well known; the deaths in her family now began to look less natural, and, in short order, she was arrested.

  “As to the business of Mme de Brinvilliers,” the king wrote Colbert, “I think it important that you tell the Premier président and the Attorney General, from me, that I expect them to do all that honorable people like them must do so as to pursue everyone, no matter what their rank, who are involved in such wickedness. Write me what you hear; it is said that there are many solicitations and that much money is being spent.”196 Still, at the moment, Mme de Brinvilliers’s crimes, while fascinating for the Parisians who flocked to her trial and execution, seemed only the actions of one perverse woman. In fact, they proved to be the tip of the iceberg.