Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King

by Antonia Fraser

  It was thus to Gobelin that Françoise put the proposition of her new post. The Abbe's reply was to tell her to make sure that they really were the King's children, not the byblows of a great court lady's love affair with an unknown noble: there was a rumour that the Duc de Lauzun was involved, Duc to the secrecy in which the household was cloaked. If they were the King's offspring, then tending to them could be seen as some kind of duty … even a holy destiny (Gobelin was very interested in the individual's search for his or her holy destiny). Thus the connection in Françoise's mind between religious duty and her role as semi-royal governess was there from the first. Above all, said Gobelin, Françoise must distinguish between Madame de Montespan and her lover: ‘She is neither here nor there but he is the King’.31

  So Françoise did accept: another rather unusual decision in an unusual life. By the time she was welcomed with her ennobled and legitimised charges to the court in the summer of 1674, she had spent four years running an unorthodox but comfortable and welcoming household, mainly at 25 rue de Vaugirard, near the Palais du Luxembourg in the parish of Saint-Sulpice.* Madame de Sévigné, who visited the house, described it as having large rooms and a necessarily large garden in which the children (still officially hidden from the world) could play in safety. Unfortunately this need for secrecy meant a lack of domestic help and even builders: Françoise would later describe how she had rushed about, painting, scrubbing, decorating … all unaided for fear of inviting dangerous speculation. Nevertheless she created, as she was able to do, a happy domesticated atmosphere.

  It was here, at this out-of-the-way house, ‘in the shadows', as Saint-Simon put it, that Louis XIV, who had seduced so many women, was himself in quite a different way seduced: although the process was not intentional. He would pay unannounced visits on his way from hunting. He found a charming, tender mother figure, with one child on her lap, another at her shoulder, a third in a cradle, reading a book aloud. ‘How good it would be to be loved by a woman like that,' he mused. In the modern sense of the word, Françoise was cool – something expressed in the nickname given to her in the Sévigné circle: ‘The Thaw’, where Louise had been ‘The Dew' and Athénaïs ‘The Torrent' among other names.

  To her genuine maternal instinct, Françoise added another very different quality, that of conversation, and its concomitant, the art of being a good listener. It was Madame de Sévigné, no mean judge of the subject, who attested to Françoise's abilities in this respect. Louis, who in principle disliked blue-stocking women and had thus been prejudiced against Françoise at the start, was quite won over by the gentle social arts she had learned among her Précieuses friends. Françoise understood perfectly well the force of that observation by Madeleine de Scudéry that a woman should never sound like a book talking.

  Of course Françoise in her thirties was still an attractive woman. Did the King, according to his wont, make a pass at her at this early stage? A letter of March 1673 in which she complained of ‘the master' and his advances, how he went away ‘disappointed but not discouraged', is certainly forged, with the benefit of hindsight.* The importance of the bond between them by the time she reached court and stayed there in 1674 was its basis in his admiration for her virtue, her respectability, her femininity, exactly those qualities which Françoise prided herself on possessing. It was a happy match of temperaments.

  Unfortunately there was a loser in this, and that loser was Athénaïs, the mother of the children. It was not a question of sexual jealousy: the issue was the perennial jealousy of the (mainly absent) parent for the (ever-present) nurse or governess. Athénaïs surely loved her children as much as grand ladies did and could, especially one whose role in life – richly rewarded – was to amuse the King. Equally Françoise gave vent to correct sentiments: ‘Nothing is more foolish than to love to excess a child who is not mine' (although her love for her darling, Maine, was certainly to excess). This common sense did not prevent her experiencing her own jealousy for the beautiful, dominating mother whose behaviour towards her children was, in Françoise's opinion at least, disruptive. Françoise considered that Athénaïs spoiled the children with sweets and other treats; Athénaïs believed that Françoise was trying to divide her children from her. It was the classic struggle.

  And no one had ever suggested that Athénaïs, fascinating as she might be, was easy to get on with. By September 1674, Françoise was complaining regularly to the Abbé Gobelin of the royal mistress's rages and caprices: surely it was not the will of God that she should continue to suffer in this way? Françoise began to talk wistfully of retirement. She even threatened to become a nun, although she quickly retracted the threat: ‘I am too old to change my condition’.34

  When the King rewarded Fracoise for all her faithful care with a large sum of money towards the end of 1674, she was able to begin the purchase of a property at Maintenon. This lovely water-girt château, twenty-five miles from Versailles, thirty-five miles from Paris, reminded her vividly of the lost paradise of her childhood, Mursay.* Medieval in origin, it had been embellished and added to over the years, principally in the sixteenth century. Françoise described it to her brother Charles in January 1675 as ‘rather a beautiful house, a little too big for the household I intend to have, in an agreeable situation'. Here she dreamed of retirement, Françoise told Gobelin, leaving ‘the sinful court' behind. She loved everything about this country retreat, her butter, her apples, her linen (which had to be stored with lavender as fragrance, not rose petals). And she could swim in the river Eure, whose waters lapped the ancient stone tower.35

  But she would retire under the name of Madame de Maintenon. The King had given her permission to use the designation taken from ‘my land' as she proudly called it (the title of Marquise came later). That name of Scarron, with its faintly disreputable tinge, was left behind. Even if the dream of retirement was to remain just that, something to which the new Madame de Maintenon would refer sorrowfully when things at court were not going according to her plan, she had already, as she said herself, achieved ‘a singular position', she who had been first a poor relation, then a poverty-stricken widow.

  What neither Françoise, Athénaïs nor Louis XIV could foresee was that the Easter of 1675 would bring an extraordinary threat to the maîtresse en titre, affecting all their destinies. Athénaïs's true adversary turned out to be not the upwardly mobile governess she had chosen but the Catholic Church itself.

  * Saint-Sulpice, much simpler then than it is today, was built in 1646 on the site of a previous structure and enlarged from 1670 onwards. The present imposing classical front dates from the eighteenth century; many further embellishments and additions were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  * At Versailles the smell of tuberoses on a summer's night was sometimes so strong that the court was driven indoors; as has been noted, it was sometimes a convenient cover-up perfume indoors.

  * Still to be seen at Versailles today, although moved to the Orangery: a remarkable souvenir of bygone amours.

  * A plaque marks her suggested birthplace, at the Hôtel du Chaumont, 5 rue du Pont, Niort.13

  * A classic combination of intimacy and inequality best captured by Jane Austen describing the position of Fanny Price at Mansfield Park in the eponymous novel.

  * Next to the Maine of Prêcheur, one of the most ancient villages in Martinique, a little plaque on the side of the church commemorates the presence there of Françoise d'Aubigné during her childhood.16

  * The writer the Chevalier de Méré, who lived in Poitou and knew Françoise when she was young, may have helped with advice over these letters, although he subsequently much exaggerated his importance in Françoise's life.

  † They lived in a house in the rue de Turenne, near the Place des Vosges in the Marais; it is now a sports shop.

  * The drunken ramblings of Françoise's jealous brother Charles – ‘a madman who should have been shut up', in the opinion of Saint-Simon – on the subject of her debaucheries in the Scarron
days should certainly be ignored: this was Charles's payback for his lifelong dependence on her.27

  * A painting of a naked woman, optimistically described as Françoise, which belonged to Villarceaux, is sometimes put forward as proof of the affair; it actually looks rather more like Ninon (who definitely had an affair with Villarceaux); even if it does depict Françoise there is no proof that she posed for it.28

  * It has been suggested that the coincidence of the two Françoise Scarrons, one of whom certainly had a colourful private life, may have been responsible for later slurs.30

  * The Allee Maintenon, reached from no. 108 rue de Vaugirard, commemorates that lost time: a quiet leafy cul-de-sac off the busy traffic-ridden street, it is guarded by a door; the courtyard inside contains various houses including a Quaker mission.32

  * Unfortunately an eighteenth-century editor of her letters, Angliviel de La Beaumelle, behaved ‘without regard to honesty', rearranging and even forging documents; later nineteenth-century editors built on this material.33

  * Today the Foundation of the château de Maintenon, created in 1983, thanks to the generosity of collateral descendants of Madame de Maintenon, means that the château is accessible to the public. It is beautiful and tranquil in its watery setting.

  CHAPTER 9

  Throwing Off a Passion

  You speak of throwing off a passion as if it was as easy as changing a chemise.

  – Angelique de Fontanges to Françoise de Maintenon, 1680

  On 10 April 1675, the Wednesday of Holy Week, an obscure priest in the local parish church of Versailles named Father Lécuyer refused absolution to Madame de Montespan. The sacrament of penance was an essential preliminary in order that Athénaïs should ‘make her Easter’: that is, take the requisite Holy Communion as ordained by the Church for practising Catholics.

  Father Lécuyer issued this brave prohibition in a dramatic fashion. Through his grille he demanded: ‘Is this Madame de Montespan who scandalises all France? Go, Madame, abandon your shocking life and then come and throw yourself at the feet of the ministers of Jesus Christ’.1 This was not the sort of advice that the startled and indignant favourite was used to. An appeal was made to Father Lécuyer's superior, Father Thibout, but – horrors! – he backed Father Lécuyer. It turned out that even the King could not simply order the ‘ministers of Jesus Christ’ to break their own laws, and in order to solve the impasse, Bishop Bossuet was brought in.

  Altogether, the Catholic Church showed no signs of giving up on its campaign for the salvation of the sovereign since those early days when Bossuet's sermons had dwelt with uncomfortable emphasis on the sins of that biblical philanderer King David. Bossuet himself had even been endorsed, as it were, by being appointed preceptor to the nine-year-old Dauphin in 1670. But the most celebrated prelate now preaching to the court was Father Louis Bourdaloue, a man in his early forties, who had originally run away from home to become a Jesuit. No stranger to the art of moral denunciation, Bourdaloue would give ten cycles of Lent and Advent sermons at court in the 1670s and 80s, more than any other preacher. His success in Paris, where he arrived in October 1669, had been immediate and he was first invited to the court in 1670. In the view of Madame de Sévigné, ‘he surpassed everything we had heard’ and on Good Friday 1671 she could not even get into the church where he was Duc to preach because it was full of the lackeys who had been there since Wednesday keeping seats for their masters.2

  It might be supposed that such a popular preacher would give the sinful courtiers (and their sinful King) the kind of dulcet message that was easy to accept. On the contrary, Bourdaloue was famously strict in his judgements, pointing out how the morality preached by Jesus Christ was in direct contrast to that of the world; on occasion he juxtaposed the virtues of pagans with the laziness of Christians. He stressed the need for frequent Communion and the serious preparations a Christian should make for it: ‘Tomorrow I must approach the [Communion] table.’ But Bourdaloue, a man of exemplary piety himself, who placed emphasis on charitable visits to the sick and prisoners, understood how denunciations of sin could be allied with gentleness – but not indulgence – towards the sinners. His manner was friendly rather than stern, and as a result the general effect was compelling. He was widely regarded as an honnete homme or civilised man, that supreme contemporary word of praise, with his ‘probity, prudence and penetration’, in the words of the introduction to a book of his sermons in 1707. Later the King would say of the charismatic priest: ‘Father, you have made me dissatisfied with myself’.3

  The rise of Bourdaloue was not good news for Athénaïs. Above all, Bourdaloue hammered home what the essential goal should be: ‘Live as a Christian king,' he told Louis XIV, ‘and you will merit salvation.’ It was that same salvation which Queen Anne had declared in peril in 1664, making her son weep. It was still in peril (and for the same reason). Now, in the interests of a double salvation, where there had once been a Double Adultery, the King and Athénaïs abandoned their relationship. It was a decision which amazed sophisticated Parisian women such as Madeleine de Scudéry.

  The pair had broken up, she wrote to Bussy-Rabutin on 20 April, ‘purely for a principle of religion’. Such a reaction was very far from Father Bourdaloue's advocacy of Magdalen as a role model: ‘Love as Magdalen loved’ and, from this, ‘inner peace would be born out of the severity of penitence.4

  By this time there was another woman also interested in the ‘project’ of Louis's salvation. Maternal, already middle-aged by the standards of the time (she was forty in 1675), virtuous and intelligent, Françoise de Maintenon had developed a benevolent but controlling character, suitable for dealing with children. As her correspondence with her confessor Gobelin shows, she found it easy to adapt these qualities to the new situation in which she found herself: being the discreet governess to the King's children was not so many steps away from discreetly advising if not governing the King himself.

  Yet as her relationship with Louis developed, Françoise was in no sense acting as a substitute for Athénaïs. Françoise was pleasant company, everyone said so, natural sweetness combined with years in a subservient position had seen to that, but she was not especially witty or even amusing. And whatever the King's roving eye, in 1675 he was still in sexual thrall to Athénaïs.

  The following vignette is significant, since the source is Madame de Maintenon herself, who confided it many years later to her protégée Marguerite de Caylus, daughter of her cousin Philippe de Villette. The quarrels of Athénaïs and Françoise had continued and there were some ‘terrible exchanges’ between them, as the governess told Gobelin. The uncomfortable intimacy thrust upon them with all the outward show of friendship – it was Athénaïs that Françoise took on a ‘camping’ expedition to Maintenon in April – did not help matters. Finally Françoise, provoked out of her usual serenity, succeeded in speaking to the King alone, something Athénaïs had tried to circumvent. Then Françoise poured out her troubles with the children's mother to their father, to the man Gobelin had encouraged her to regard as her true employer.5

  She outlined Athénaïs's frequent and tempestuous fits of jealousy (of which Louis himself had had ample experience in the last eight years). The King responded: ‘Haven't you yourself often noticed, Madame, how her beautiful eyes fill with tears when you tell her about any generous or touching action?’ They were the words of a man still in love and can scarcely have soothed the indignant governess, more accustomed these days to seeing Athénaïs's beautiful eyes flashing with anger than with adorable compassion. And perhaps Françoise herself had just a little pang of jealousy for the triumphant beauty of her erstwhile friend, something, with all her attraction, she could never rival.

  For all these upsets, the women were of course destined to remain in a kind of spurious intimacy, of the sort which had once united Athénaïs and Louise. That was the way of the court, the will of the King. Now that Athénaïs was duly separated from the King as a result of that ecclesiastical ambush, Françoise t
ook care to preserve her neutrality – and her reputation – by taking the five-year-old Duc du Maine on a long trip to the thermal baths at Bourbon in the hopes of doing something for his unfortunate physique. It was an action she performed from the heart, since the helpless Maine was probably the human being Françoise loved most in the world, but it also placed public emphasis on her motherly tenderness.

  In the meantime Bossuet devoted himself to the struggle for Athénaïs's soul, as well as the soul of the King, and for the continued separation of two people who had certainly not lost their deep attachment to each other. Louis was still determined that his mistress – or rather his former mistress – should have every whim indulged. In 1675 alone Colbert was obliged to spend nearly 23,000 livres on orange trees, those palpable signs of Louis's favour, for her house at Clagny. It was an explicit royal command: ‘Continue to take the most beautiful [to her] … in order to please me’.6

  Bossuet acted as the go-between, a task made easier by the fact that the King departed for Flanders campaigning. The Dutch War begun in 1672 had not yet brought him the victories of the earlier War of Devolution. The optimistic Bishop suggested that Providence would now reward him for his sacrifice with victory: the implication being that previous military troubles (like the deaths of so many of his legitimate children) had been the divine vengeance on his philandering.7

  By a joyous coincidence – from the dévot point of view – the final vows of Louise de La Vallière as Sister Louise de La Miséricorde took place on 3 June 1675. A great crowd attended, including the Queen herself, only too happy with this spectacle of the penitent mistress, and undoubtedly wishing that Athénaïs would follow suit. All commented on the new spiritual beauty of Louise in her dark vestments. A few years later she wrote, with some help from Bossuet, who edited the manuscript, a religious tract: Reflections on the Mercy of God. Her rank was not quite forgotten, for the author was described as a ‘Carmelite Nun, known in the world as the Duchesse de La Vallière’. A rhyme used as a prefix described how Sister Louise had once given ‘her heart to the Earth’ until a flash of holy light had obliged her ‘to declare war / On the World and the Devil in order to merit Heaven’. Throughout Sister Louise declared her devotion to the penitent saint who was her role model: ‘above all regard me without cease as Magdalen. Like her I will wash your feet with my tears …’8