It is possible that Mme de Brinvilliers’s example stimulated others, but even before she was caught, poisoners and sorceresses had been offering needy heirs what came to be called “inheritance powder,” while at the same time they produced a variety of magical potions to ensure love, or impotence, or any condition, just about, required by the buyer. In some instances, when the case proved especially difficult, black masses were celebrated to enlist Satan’s help.
Chief among these sorcerers-poisoners-abortionists were two women, Voisin and Vigouroux, the former’s lover, Lesage, and, finally, two priests, the abbés Mariette and Guibourg; when, in the spring of 1679, they were arrested, terror descended on the Court. On April 10, the king created a special tribunal, the chambre ardente, to look into the multiplying accusations, and in short order, 442 upper-class men and women were arrested. Worse, the poisoners now accused some of the people closest to the king, beginning with the comtesse de Soissons, Mazarin’s niece and Louis’s mistress in the 1650s, who now held the first of the great Court offices, that of Superintendent of the Queen’s Household. She was by no means alone, however: Great ladies like the duchesse de Bouillon, a relative of Turenne’s, the princesse de Tingry, the maréchale de La Ferté, and the marquise de Polignac were also denounced by the prisoners.
Some of them, led by the comtesse de Soissons, simply preferred to flee; others, like the maréchal de Luxembourg, asked to be sent to the Bastille, and duly were. Of course, Voisin, Vigouroux, and their accomplices were tried, and early in 1680, executed.
That these wholesale murders should have taken place at all was, obviously, a grim indication as to the real state of society, and a sad comment on the solidity of the new order. The king had, from the very beginning, ordered the police to do its duty fearlessly, no matter how powerful the people involved. But then, in April 1680, a new accusation was made by Marguerite Voisin, the poison maker’s daughter; this time, the person named was none other than Mme de Montespan.
“With an air of naïveté which, if she is telling lies, can fool anyone,”197 the horrified head of the police reported to his master, she accused the favorite of having used potions to keep or regain the king’s love; of having lent herself to the celebration of black masses with the same object; and finally, of having ordered the king poisoned. Worse still, these assertions were corroborated by several other prisoners, including the abbé Guibourg.
Sensibly, Louis ordered that the affair be held absolutely secret, but the inquest continued. Soon, Mme de Montespan’s maid, Mlle des Oeillets, was implicated as well, and there was a distinct possibility that the favorite was, indeed, guilty. Still, parts of the accusation seemed more plausible than others. Even in a fit of jealous rage, it is hard to see why the marquise should have wanted the king poisoned in 1679: After all, she would have been much worse off under the reign of the dauphin, who, no doubt, would have allowed the queen to take revenge on the former favorite. The very means to be used, a poisoned pair of gloves, the odor of which was supposedly lethal, hardly compels belief.
There were other improbabilities as well. The marquise was said to have become Voisin’s client as early as 1667, a time at which Louis XIV was passionately in love with her and she certainly needed no help from a sorceress; again, the black masses were supposedly celebrated in 1673, a time when her hold on the king was undisputed. Still, an element of doubt remains.
Both Marguerite Voisin and Guibourg, for instance, were specific and precise about the black masses. These were rites held at night in a deserted church where a mass was celebrated, with Satan’s name replacing Jesus, a naked woman replacing the altar, and the blood of a freshly killed child (or sometimes an animal) replacing the consecrated wine; thus murder was added to sacrilege. What does seem probable is that the black masses were celebrated; that a woman whom Guibourg and Marguerite Voisin believed to be Mme de Montespan served as the altar, but that the woman in question was Mlle des Oeillets and not the marquise. Confrontations between Mlle des Oeillets and the poisoners were not absolutely conclusive - two recognized her immediately, a third was not sure - but, on balance, the odds are against her.
As for the love powder - on the eye of newt, wing of bat order - that Mme de Montespan is supposed to have bought and slipped into the king’s food, the probabilities are overwhelming: Giving the desired person magic potions was a far from uncommon course in the seventeenth century, and the marquise really had no reason not to try it.
Because the affair, watched over by Colbert as usual, was so very grave, it was allowed to end inconclusively. There was always the possibility that the poisoners had invented the whole thing to save their skins, but then, the risks of that course were immense: Capital punishment could take on relatively quick and easy forms - hanging, strangulation - or excruciating ones like quartering or burning alive, and the consequences of a false accusation against Mme de Montespan were hardly likely to be pleasant.
On balance, therefore, and without any degree of absolute certainty, a mixed verdict seems called for: Mme de Montespan was probably partly guilty and partly innocent, but, in any case, the blow to Louis XIV’s reputation, had all this depravity become known, would have been terrible. To set yourself up as a model of monarchs, as the greatest king in the world, who was, at that very moment, busy enlarging his conquests, and then to be revealed as the adulterous lover of a sacrilegious poisoner, was hardly to be contemplated. The affair remained secret, and Louis went on treating the marquise as if none of it had ever happened.
What does seem certain, however, is that these revelations finally severed the two lovers’ ties. As it was, the king was having an affair with Mlle de Fontanges all through 1679; that, in turn, ended in 1680, when a pregnancy was followed by a miscarriage from which the new mistress never recovered. And, more visibly than ever, he turned to the new marquise de Maintenon.
It was no wonder, really: At forty-two, Louis XIV was no longer a young man; scandals which a few years ago had not mattered now worried him more, especially since, with the onset of middle age, he was becoming markedly more religious. Mlle de Fontanges had been unmarried; Mme de Maintenon was widowed; Mme de Montespan was still married to another man. Then, too, both her physical attractions (she was enormous) and her intellectual brio had faded: The marquise was now mostly a fat woman who made scenes, and right next to her was a quiet, composed, decent, attractive woman with an exceptionally brilliant mind. Much as he liked women physically, Louis was never lastingly attracted unless the object of his desire could also think and talk intelligently: Mme de Maintenon fulfilled all these requirements. Nor should the fact that she was visibly pious be underestimated: As Louis began to turn more toward religion, it could only help to have the woman he loved show him the way.
Then, too, it was in 1680 that the king began to concentrate his affections on his illegitimate children at the expense of their mothers. Royal bastards had long had a place in Court and society: Charles IX’s illegitimate son was created duc d’Angoulême, a title previously borne by princes of the royal house; Henri IV’s sons had also been given duchies, but they customarily took rank as of the date of the creation of their peerage and were treated as great nobles, not members of the royal family. Now, to the horror of all traditionalists, Louis XIV, who clearly thought descent from himself was all that counted, began raising the status of his illegitimate offspring so as to bring them, little by little, closer to that of princes of the blood royal.
Because this notion was so new and shocking, the king proceeded slowly. But his intentions became unmistakable, when, in January 1680, he arranged the marriage of the fourteen-year-old Mlle de Blois, his daughter with Mme de La Vallière,* with the prince de Conti,† the great Condé’s nephew, and a legitimate prince. The fact that Conti agreed to what, until then, would have been considered a disgrace shows clearly how powerful the king had become. From then on, the policy was pursued relentlessly: By intermingling his bastards and the royal family, Louis XIV made sure that, in the next
generation, most distinctions between the two would have faded away.
Just as typical as this exaltation of his children from the wrong side of the blanket was the fact that not once during the elaborate marriage festivities was the absent mother of the bride mentioned. It was not only that, to the king, anyone who left the Court ipso facto ceased existing - and the repentant La Vallière had immured herself in a convent - but also that, henceforth, the emphasis was to be on the father - himself - while the mother, with her taint of lower birth and adultery, was to be forgotten. Mme de Montespan, who remained all too visible, understood very clearly what this development was all about.
By 1680, therefore, the aspect of the Court had changed a good deal. The queen, whose looks did not improve with age, was as self-effacing as ever: Ready to demand every last ounce of deference due her by her ladies and obedient to all her husband’s wishes. The dauphin, who had reached his nineteenth year, was now given not only his own establishment, but a wife as well, the daughter of the elector of Bavaria, a Catholic prince and France’s ally, most of the time, against the emperor.
“The Dauphin,” Primi Viconti noted, “took a wife as obediently as he learned his lessons … His governor was the duc de Montausier, an elderly man of austere mores and severe principles. The Dauphin seemed to have become wholly passive; no one could say anything in his ear.* There were even some who said that the little marquis de Créqui having taught him a certain bad habit, Millet, his undergovernor, would stand with a rod near the bed, and when he saw the Dauphin move his hands under the blanket, he would strike him.
“For his wedding, his First Valet de Chambre, a friend of Mme de Beauvais, who had given the King his first love lesson, was ordered to enlighten him.”198 In fact, although as a child he had seemed lively enough, the dauphin took after his mother’s side. A large, blond young man early given to fat, he had absolutely no intellectual interests: Food, the hunt, and a little later, a low-born mistress were sufficient for his happiness. He knew nothing of government, was never consulted or taught by his father, whom, indeed, he feared greatly. The very appellation Louis XIV gave him at this time was significant: Monseigneur, a rough equivalent of Your Lordship, was a term of respect used to a superior; princes and ministers were called Monseigneur by courtiers, and courtiers by their servants. As for earlier dauphins, they had always been referred to as Monsieur le Dauphin, Your Royal Highness, or, by the King, “mon fils” (my son). Now the king started, ironically, to call his son Monseigneur, just as a father reproving a little boy might say sarcastically: “And what has Your Lordship done this time?” In no time at all, the dauphin became known, simply, as Monseigneur, in the same way that Condé was Monsieur le Prince, and with the passage of time, the original sarcasm was forgotten; still, it was typical of the king’s attitude to his only (legitimate) son and heir.
The dauphin’s marriage released him from the unwelcome attentions of the duc de Montausier, a man widely credited with breaking his pupil’s spirit, but it did not raise him in his father’s esteem: The king expected prompt and absolute obedience; the dauphin gave it, and that was all. At first glance, this rather dreadful relationship seems to reflect on Louis: So stern, so unloving a father deserves nothing but blame, and yet once again an exception must be made. There was a long tradition, in France and elsewhere, of rebellion from the crown prince or, as was the case under Louis XIII, of the next heir to the throne. Given the very recent taming of the aristocracy, it would have been the most normal of things for dissatisfied nobles to have formed an alliance with the dauphin to fight the king, and that is what Louis was determined to prevent. He was undoubtedly helped by his son’s stupidity - but then no one had extolled the duc d’Orléans’s intelligence in the 1630s; what really mattered, however, was that the young man was much too frightened of his father ever to think of rebelling. Just as he had with Monsieur, the king had made very sure that no member of his family would ever again serve as a cover for civil war.
Of course, that achievement - and it was one - had its drawbacks: No one could tell what would happen when the slow, passive, lazy dauphin’s turn came to rule. Still, in 1680, with Louis in vigorous early middle age, that was hardly a pressing problem, and there was always the possibility the prince would be ruled by his wife.
From the beginning, in fact, it was clear that she was, at any rate, cleverer than her husband. “The Dauphine,” Primi recorded, “from the moment she arrived, seemed to know all about the Court, ready to flatter the King and obey all his wishes … The offices of her Household were sought in preference to those of the Queen’s.* The duchesse de Richelieu, who was dame d’honneur† to the Queen, became that of the Dauphine, thus incurring a lowering of her rank, and her husband the duc became chevalier d’honneur,‡ but that was all the result of an intrigue of Mme de Maintenon’s, the governess of Mme de Montespan’s children, who was made a lady of the wardrobe, first under the maréchale de Rochefort, and was then declared her equal, which infuriated the latter; but the most furious of all was Mme de Montespan, who, as a result of Mme de Fontanges’s illness, had hoped the King would come back to her.”199 In fact, there had been a quiet revolution, and it was a while before all those eager spectators realized just what had happened.
Because Mme de Maintenon came from so humble a background, it was long assumed that her rising eminence was due only to some service she was performing for the king - some thought she was his procuress, others the scribe to whom he dictated his memoirs. In fact, Louis had fallen well and truly in love with her, and his feelings grew in intensity as time passed. The positions in the dauphine’s Household were proof of that: The duchesse de Richelieu was made dame d’honneur not only because she was extremely respectable but because she was one of Mme de Maintenon’s closest friends; the same was true of her husband’s appointment as chevalier d’honneur. Equally significant was Mme de Maintenon’s own position: first as a lady of the wardrobe, then as the equal of the maréchale de Rochefort, who, socially, was immensely superior to her. Finally, there was a hint of things to come. Mme de Maintenon, as she had shown with her erstwhile charges, Mme de Montespan’s children, was a born educator; she was also more than clever enough to understand the importance of conciliating the next generation of the royal family. By placing her in the dauphine’s Household, the king was enabling her to ingratiate herself with the future queen of France while, probably, taking a hand in the education of the children she was confidently expected to bear.
As for the dauphine, she found her place as easily as if she had been brought up to it. Fairly tall, noble-looking, she had fine eyes, a good complexion, and perfect teeth, which helped to make up for rather undistinguished features; she could speak several languages and was a gifted musician, something sure to endear her to her father-in-law. “She had a lively mind,” an observer noted, “but she did not allow its full extent to be seen on many occasions. She always paid attention to the King, having determined to behave entirely according to his wishes and to avoid anything which might annoy him.”200 In spite of that, it soon became clear that she was hardly capable of influencing anyone: A woman of mediocre intelligence, she much preferred the ease of her private rooms to the festivities of the Court. Still, she fulfilled her most important task. On August 6, 1682, she gave birth to a son, Louis, who was titled duc de Bourgogne; on December 19, 1683, came a second son, Philippe, titled duc d’Anjou; on August 31, 1686, the dauphin’s third son, Charles, titled duc de Berry, was born. The succession was safely assured.
By 1683, on the other side of Louis XIV’s family, the illegitimate, three of the children had died: the sixteen-year-old comte de Vermandois, Mme de La Vallière’s only son, the eleven-year-old comte de Vexin, and Mlle de Tours. Aside from the princesse de Conti, that left the king two sons and two daughters by Mme de Montespan, and as the years passed, they grew more and more visible.
As for the royal family proper, Louis XIV’s early goal was fully accomplished. The queen’s death in 1683 mad
e no difference to the life of the Court. The king cried, announced that this sorrow was the first she had caused him, and promptly forgot her. Monsieur, more frivolous than ever, was hopelessly in love with the chevalier de Lorraine, a greedy young man of good family, who exploited him ruthlessly while making very sure that he never opposed the king. The second Madame, Elizabeth-Charlotte von der Pfalz, who had married Monsieur in November 1671, was also a Bavarian princess, but of a different branch from the dauphine’s. A large, hearty woman, she developed a passion for the hunt, and (although she did not quite know it) fell in love with the king; the very opposite of her predecessor, Henrietta Stuart, she was incapable of intrigue: There, too, the king could feel safe.
Even that erstwhile rebel Monsieur le Prince was now a dead volcano: After years of total submission, he had slipped into semi-senility and stopped mattering for several years before his death in 1686, while his son was an obedient mediocrity. Now, wherever he looked, Louis XIV saw that he had succeeded: There was no one even remotedly capable of opposing him.
As a result he became, it seemed, even more awe-inspiring. It was in the eighties that the myth of the Sun King became firmly and finally established. He was, everyone agreed, the greatest monarch in Europe; he ruled the strongest and richest nation, lived in the most beautiful palaces, presided over the most splendid and obedient Court. Here, indeed, was a new paradigm of monarchy.
As if the state of France had not made the king’s triumph plain enough, he now determined to make Versailles the visible expression of the new monarchy. The great building campaigns of the early eighties made the palace into what we see today, at least from the outside, since most of the interior was transformed repeatedly after Louis XIV’s death. Luckily, however, the State Apartments remain much as he made them, and they give us a clear image of what it was all about.
Louis XIV Page 26