by Michael Hone
Ruvigny
Richelieu, never out of new ideas, decided to win over Hautefort’s best friend, Mlle de Chémerault, by having her seduced by Cinq-Mars, which the boy immediately accomplished, but when Richelieu then ordered him to have her spy on Hautefort, he refused. So Richelieu tried another method, more infallible, one that would have saved much time and effort. He simply paid Chémerault to spy on Hautefort and, especially, to take Hautefort’s place in Louis’ bed, which would have destroyed Hautefort’s reputation and would have given the cardinal access to Louis’ most intimate thoughts, principally his true feelings concerning Richelieu himself, as Louis was known to talk on and on about his problems with those who shared his intimacy.
But for the moment earth-shattering news came through. After 22 years, Anne was pregnant. We know of no women Louis had slept with, including Hautefort, who may have spent time talking with the king, and then let it be known, in smiles and not-so-discreet winks that, as usual, part of the time had been spent in bed. Later, when Louis would become so tired of Cinq-Mars’s insults that he forbade him entry to his apartments, Cinq-Mars would read inside the king’s chambers but outside the bedroom, the court naturally concluding that he had been with Louis. Louis was so adverse to women that Luynes had literally carried Louis to Anne’s bed for the first time years after their marriage, and had tenderly encouraged Louis on, as an heir was essential for the stability of France (the reason why, in England, the court of Elizabeth I never tired of trying to convince her to marry).
Everything that went wrong in the court of Louis was put at Richelieu’s door because of jealousy at Richelieu’s ascendancy over Louis, and for genuine hatred of his arrogance. Queen Anne even blamed Richelieu for Louis’ lack of interest in her, the fact that she was pudgy having nothing to do with it, because during some epochs being even fat was a sexually attractive attribute, and in sexuality there are absolutely no rules, no rhyme nor reason. Zeus had impregnated Alcmene for three solid days and nights in order to produce Heracles, Louis had taken twenty-two years to make what France is most known for, Louis XIV and Versailles, with its annual 8,000,000 visitors.
With Hautefort still in place, and with Louis mooning over La Fayette, Richelieu’s only way of learning what the king was up to seemed to have been, once again, the job opening of Grand Master of the Wardrobe, the place to put someone of trust, in the very heart of Louis’ residence, especially as Louis was known to unburden himself of stress by freely talking to the Grand Master. Richelieu therefore turned to Cinq-Mars’s mother, Marie, to enroll her help. Marie immediately sided with him, as Richelieu held all the keys to the court, and could make of her and her son what he wished, showering both with land and titles if such were his desire. Here the Wicked Warlord of the West joined the Wicked Witch, her guileless son the victim. And as they knew Cinq-Mars would never be convinced by peaceful persuasion, both applied maximum force, Marie by stopping the boy’s allowance, Richelieu by threatening him banished from the court itself, and in Renaissance France life did not exist outside the king’s court. Cinq-Mars was not of those who could wed and form a family in total anonymity as did commoners, even if it remains, then as today, the best guarantor of earthy happiness.
On March 27, 1638, Henri d’Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, Monsieur le Grand to the court, became the Grand Master of the Wardrobe.
In the midst of court intrigue only Cinq-Mars and his new girl Marion de Lorme were unaware of the undercurrents, both in love and satiated, although a new temptation will always divert a lad for a few moments dedicated to the discovery of an as-yet unseen pair of firm melons. But intrigue there was, with Richelieu paying Chémerault to spy on Cinq-Mars whom she was still ‘’seeing’’, as well as spying on her best friend, the cardinal’s enemy Hautefort. Hautefort was seeing the king in the privacy of his rooms and repeating his every word to her closest friend, the queen. Snakes, each biting the tail of the other.
Cinq-Mars had been staying at his mother’s home but her interference in his private affairs and her attempts to encourage him in the direction of the women Richelieu was using as spies (women Cinq-Mars honored when it excited him to do so, but no more), along with the advice of his friend Ruvigny, a man of the world in the eyes of Cinq-Mars because he was above the level of bragging about his conquests, the major subject during drinking binges between Cinq-Mars and his night-roving pals, convinced Cinq-Mars to leave his mother’s home and lodge with Ruvigny.
Cinq-Mars made another friend at the time, an ugly hunchback of impeccable lineage, Louis d’Astarac, marquis de Marestaing, vicomte de Fontrailles et de Cogotois, that we’ll call Fontrailles. Tallemand described Fontrailles as being hunchbacked ‘’in front’’ as well as behind. Small and fat. Fontrailles was with Ruvigny when Richelieu entered the room and told Fontrailles to leave, as he was expecting an ambassador who didn’t like monsters (‘’Ne vous montrez point, cet ambassadeur n’aime pas les monstres.’’) Fontrailles gritted his teeth and told Ruvigny that Richelieu had planted a knife in his chest, one he would use to knife Richelieu the moment he could.
We’ll learn more about Fontrailles later, but his principle interest was in intrigue and conspiracy. He would be the catalyst to Cinq-Mars’s death because he would go to Spain to organize a plot to kill Richelieu, a plot developed with the Spanish ambassador Olivares that would have seen Spanish troops enter France, an act of treason. The plot centered on Louis’ brother Gaston who was supposed to give a signal that he was too cowardly to give at the very last moment, the details later.
It was Fontrailles’ intelligence that attracted Cinq-Mars, Fontrailles who made it his life’s ambition to destroy Richelieu, whom he had already guessed would use Cinq-Mars to further his, Richelieu’s, ambitions. Soon Fontrailles had carte blanche with Cinq-Mars and his total loyalty, and was able to enter Cinq-Mars’s rooms unannounced because Cinq-Mars believed that Fontrailles’ ambition was the betterment of Cinq-Mars himself, and Cinq-Mars’s place in the court. Cinq-Mars found such homage natural, thanks to his royal connections and his willingness to hand over his girls to his friends, once he had discovered their secret places, as well as the reductions in the price of the apparel tailors were begging him to wear in court, happy to oblige Cinq-Mars’s noble friends. All of this made Cinq-Mars supremely confident in himself and in his place in the universe.
De Thou was also one who could enter Cinq-Mars’s rooms unannounced, a lad Cinq-Mars had known from his boyhood, one who had been his neighbor. Supremely intelligent like Fontrailles, de Thou had already traveled widely throughout Europe to the Levant, and at age 19 he was a parliamentary counselor. He was also gifted in military strategy, was highly courageous, and had been wounded in battle. De Thou was deeply religious and thoroughly honest, certainly Cinq-Mars’s most faithful friend, and gave Cinq-Mars the name, son inquiétude, Mister Anxiety. He was the son of a humanist and later one of the writers of the Edict of Nantes. He was also wealthy and had come to Chevreuse’s aid when she was sent packing from court for one of her numerous indiscretions. She may have bestowed her favors on de Thou, as she did all the others, but as she was Richelieu’s enemy, humiliating him in public by refusing his advances, de Thou automatically became an enemy in Richelieu’s eyes for having helped her in her time of need. Later de Thou would be in the boat, alongside Cinq-Mars, directly behind Richelieu’s vessel, their destination the executioner’s block.
But that was the future. For the moment Cinq-Mars was not intimately involved with Louis and he was seeing Marion to his heart and loins’ content, living what was most probably the happiest time of his short life.
Naturally, during Cinq-Mars’s two years at the court he had heard all about Louis’ passion for Luynes, Baradas and Saint-Simon. He had heard the stories of Henri III’s loves, especially that for Épernon. As these loves were accepted by the court, and certainly many a young man bowed low when presented to the king, their throats suddenly so parched they couldn’t utter a word, because they realized that p
erhaps their moment had come to join the ranks of the former immortals, each of which had renown and fabulous wealth, the gift of the king (by way of the people, who were often starving). If Cinq-Mars had sheltered such ambition is not known, for a boy’s dreams can often be limitless.
No love can equal the intensity of that between two men, drawn to each other by mutual desire. This was not the kind of love that Cinq-Mars would know with Louis, and so from the very outset it was perverted. Fontrailles would not have hesitated a second in using his friend to destroy Richelieu, as that was his nature, and although de Thou’s hatred for the cardinal was deep, it in no way had the depth of Fontrailles’. Prestige at court, his own carriage and horses, estates, titles and wealth, it was to these Cinq-Mars fell victim, a golden trap that not even a Hercules could have avoided.
A good temperament and optimism are mysterious gifts Nature offers some, one of whom was Cinq-Mars. He was also capable of violent outbursts, but this is common in boys and men alike, those used to getting their way and those who have to fight for every inch of ground while growing up. Cinq-Mars’s life was dedicated to pleasure, which he at times shared in group libertinism. Even Marion de Lorme was apparently convinced to share herself with Cinq-Mars’s friends, for the pleasure of Cinq-Mars’s eyes. This cheerful, basic and basically uncomplicated chap entered the service of the king, a man of dark moods, an unfulfilled monk, an ascetic who tried to distance himself from the biblically sinful love of boys, a man of 37 to Cinq-Mars, 18.
Now in the king’s service, he didn’t try for long to change the king’s tastes in clothes, berated or even perhaps hit with a cane at most attempts, but there were wonderful compensations. Every tailor in Paris was on his knees begging the young man to try this or that outfit, boots and wigs, some with curled locks described as exquisite. He was a living model who inspired the men of the court, as said, ample recompense for tailors who realized, too, that there was no hope with Louis himself (although Louis apparently did try, at first, to wear some of the things the lad suggested). Also luckily for the boy, Louis, highly religious, regretted each act of indecency with boys, shame that went a long way in lessening his passage à l’acte with Cinq-Mars. In addition to that was Louis’ precarious health. Real or imagined, he nonetheless submitted himself to bleedings, a huge variety of medicines and enemas, all of which certainly lessened his natural lust, giving Cinq-Mars time to find a corner in the palace for the girls not good enough for his rooms, or visit someone in Paris, or mount a horse in the direction of some lady waiting in her manor, or the ever-available Marion de Lorme.
It is doubtful that Cinq-Mars passed judgment on Louis. The French had been raised for too many centuries to respect the head of their kingdom, a man believed to hold curative powers (for all but himself, it would seem). Yet intimacy does encourage disdain, although for the moment that intimacy was one of proximity, not yet physical. Louis sermonized the boy but was a natural teacher who had learned a great deal in his lifetime and shared it with Cinq-Mars, as he had done Baradas and Saint-Simon before him. Childish letters remain in Louis’ hand, those he wrote to his beloveds, that Cinq-Mars would soon be receiving himself. But in the meantime those at court who perhaps knew Louis better than he knew himself, easily scented the new direction of the wind, and groveled before the boy, now untouchable. Richelieu realized this before them all, so he could do no more than acquiesce when Cinq-Mars told him he would not spy on Louis, not for the cardinal or for anyone else. Richelieu put the knowledge away in some corner of his brain, to resurface later when he put in movement the events that would place Cinq-Mars in the boat behind Richelieu’s own, to the place where the boy’s come-hither eyes, sensual lips and exquisite curls would end drenched in blood at the bottom of a basket.
The future Louis XIV came into the world in 1638, and Louis’ obligation to his queen and country ended, as well as his fear that his treacherous brother Gaston would one day replace him (even though child mortality remained so atrociously high that families farmed out their children to wet nurses who raised them in the countryside for around seven years, the time for Death to seek victims elsewhere).
Marion de Lorme was certainly in love with Cinq-Mars, and was a carbon-copy of Cinq-Mars himself, fun loving, vivacious, easy to make laugh and thirsty for sexual pleasure, as beautiful as Cinq-Mars was handsome. Although her father had raised her to be a good girl, she rapidly became a courtesan, one men loved to show off. Her two alternatives in life were either finding a husband or opening a deluxe hotel for respectable gentlemen that she--and any daughters she might produce--would run with sophistication.
Cinq-Mars was at Marion’s side from the moment she arrived at court on the arm of a rich merchant, an arrangement that apparently stimulated carnal interest at the time rather than dampened it. He knew about her before her arrival, in fact, he knew that she had been spotted by Richelieu who requested her presence in private, she dressed as a page, and the cardinal then fucked her, to not put too fine a point on it. When she hooked up with Cinq-Mars Richelieu realized the golden opportunity it represented, and sent her a gift of 100 gold pistoles, Erlanger tells us, that she flung in the face of the messenger. An act as public as Chevreuse’s refusal to sleep with Richelieu, an embarrassment he would not forget.
But for the moment Cinq-Mars was still 18, with Marion at his side, and the world was his apple.
The new Master of the Wardrobe was powerful, but he was a servant, and servants were respectful of nobles. During a displacement with Louis at Mézières Cinq-Mars came into contact with the Duc de Nemours, described as handsome and hotheaded. Perhaps jealous of someone handsomer than he, and certainly envious of Cinq-Mars’s favored place with Louis, the Duc launched spiritual jabs in Cinq-Mars’s direction that night at dinner, that Cinq-Mars, to everyone’s supreme surprise, answered back, proof that the boy had rhetorical intelligence and courage. Furious, Nemours threw an object at Cinq-Mars, something taken from his plate, some sources say a pea, others a cherrystone, that Cinq-Mars snatched in flight and hurled back, hitting the Duc in the eye. Nemours was immediately on his feet and at Cinq-Mars’s throat, and both could only be separated by the intervention of several other males. Louis hadn’t been present but was informed, and it looked bad for the boy because Louis was a stickler for court etiquette, and a servant, even the king’s Master of the Wardrobe, was not to answer a noble with anything but a bow and humble regrets for whatever lack of respect he was accused of.
The following day, in public, Louis put his hand on Cinq-Mars’s shoulder and addressed him as my friend, a show of affection that even Henri III would not have dared (although behind closed doors the cross-dressing Henri showed far greater affection to his unclothed favorites and allowed them familiarities rarely known since Greek banquets (5).) Cinq-Mars’s actions had been a breach of etiquette, but Louis’ response was a veritable court earthquake.
The next three months, as Louis and his soldiers waged war against certain recalcitrant regions in and around France, would be the best of times for both Louis and Cinq-Mars, and certainly the ideal moment for their first and possibly numerous intimacies, for they were among men, many of whom shared Louis’ bent, and Marion was hundreds of miles away. Cinq-Mars basked in the warm friendship, especially as Louis was reported to have been a courageous and competent leader of soldiers, something which must have impressed the boy, now 19, with less than three more years to live.
Richelieu joined them, and immediately made his venom felt. Reports that he had received from Mézières and elsewhere left little doubt as to Louis’ attachment for Cinq-Mars, and as Richelieu had been present when Louis was frequenting both Baradas and Saint-Simon, he knew to what extent Louis was capable of losing his grip on reality. It was therefore the ideal moment to call the boy aside and convince him that his only obstacle now was the continued presence of Mme Hautefort, and that by ousting her he would have complete control over the king’s heart. Cinq-Mars, on a cloud, went to see Louis. We cannot know if th
e boy sincerely wanted the man’s love for himself only, or if he was fainting distress as a power play, but his wretched aspect alerted Louis and gained his full concern. By now besotted by the lad, Louis openly begged him to confess his troubles, forcing him to come clean that when they returned to Paris Louis would see Hautefort again, and Cinq-Mars would lose his love. Erlanger goes on to say that Louis immediately presented Cinq-Mars with 1,500 écus and his promise to never see her again. Other sources claim he took the boy by the hand and led him to Hautefort’s, where he broke with her. Louis being Louis, he probably just avoided being in the same room with her, or had messengers make known to her that access to Louis was at an end. Her response was apparently to play hard to get, certain of her charms and convinced that Louis would eventually come crawling back. After all, she thought, what importance could Cinq-Mars possible be to the king, as he was a boy? Still other sources maintain that it hadn’t been difficult for Louis to leave her because once she learned about the cherrystone episode she had started badmouthing both Cinq-Mars and the king.