Athenais (28 page)

Considered by the court and the ambassadors to be “the Real Queen,” Athénaïs could bank on her public importance to Louis in maintaining her position as
maîtresse en titre.
She could not, however, afford to be complacent about the fidelity of his affections. Only two weeks after passing on the news of the Marquise’s renewed power, Mme. de Sévigné reported that there was the “smell of fresh meat in Quanto’s country.” Marie-Elisabeth (called Isabelle) de Ludres was a lay canoness at the aristocratic convent of Poussay in the Vosges mountains. Ten years younger than Athénaïs, she had come to court in 1670, following a broken engagement at the age of fifteen to the Duc de Lorraine, to serve Henriette d’Angleterre, and subsequently Queen Marie-Thérèse. She was in a sense a lesser version of the
maîtresse en titre,
tall, slender and blue-eyed, with a mane of tawny hair, and reputedly as witty as she was pretty. With her strong northern accent, she pronounced a “d” as a “t,” which Mme. de Sévigné’s daughter Mme. de Grignan laughed at, but the King found it most charming. Louis appeared altogether very interested in the young woman, who bore the honorary title of “Madame” to reflect her status as a canoness, and the court was awash with rumors that Athénaïs was about to be deposed.

It was, of course, not the first time Athénaïs had had to cope with a threat to her position in Louis’s heart. Quite apart from the machinations of the
dévot
party, the King was constantly tempted away from fidelity to his mistress by the bevies of ladies only too anxious to surrender their favors. Athénaïs’s gracious suppression of her inclinations to jealousy, so long as Louis confined himself to casual flings, had, over the years, proved a wise policy. Louis had no real need to seek satisfaction elsewhere, other than for a little sexual novelty, and in general he treated the women who flung themselves at him “like post horses that one mounts but one time, and that one never sees again,” according to the old soldier the Marquis de Saint-Géran, who cheerfully admitted that he would have offered his own daughter for service in the saddle.

Where necessary, Athénaïs used her wit to confound any hussy who looked likely to prove unusually troublesome, and although a French proverb has it that
esprit
may be the weapon of the weak, she deployed it with great success. For her own entourage, she selected women whose virtue was exceeded only by their plainness, although one of them, Mlle. des Oeillets, nonetheless managed to focus the King’s roving eye for a moment. Where vigilance failed, rumor, that treacherous ally, could cool Louis’s ardor. One pretty rival, Mlle. de Grancey, who resembled La Vallière too closely for comfort, was dealt with by a whisper emanating from Athénaïs’s supple tongue that suggested she had a secret child by Monsieur’s favorite, the Chevalier de Lorraine. The beautiful princess Marie-Anne de Wurtemburg lost her chance when it appeared that she had prostituted herself to a corrupt Jacobin monk who claimed to have discovered the philosopher’s stone. When the King’s former lover, Olympe Mancini, now Comtesse de Soissons, vented her spleen on Athénaïs by ensuring that the Queen was surrounded by the most beautiful maids-of-honor she could procure, Athénaïs railed with great self-righteousness against the loose morals of these young ladies, and dispatched the Duchesse de Richelieu to convey this suspicion to the Queen. Alarmed that she should be harboring a potential harem, Marie-Thérèse played straight into Athénaïs’s hands by disbanding her maids-of-honor in 1673, replacing them with respectable married ladies.

The Comtesse de Soissons’s younger sister Marie Mancini, Louis’s first love, had threatened to reappear at court in 1672, on fleeing her unhappy marriage to an Italian prince. Athénaïs knew that Marie was a clever and spirited woman, and that she was certain to try for a reconciliation by playing on Louis’s sentimental memories. This time with the approval of the Queen, Athénaïs refused outright to countenance her presence at court. Marie defiantly took up residence at Lys, near Fontainebleau, but Athénaïs succeeded in having her removed to a safer distance. Marie knew when she had met her match, and wisely departed into a compromising asylum with the Duc de Savoie.

Yet the
chambre des filles
was a veritable hydra, and as soon as one pretty head was cut off, another sprang up in its place.
¹
However insouciant she appeared, Athénaïs suffered constantly, torn between hope that the latest lover was merely a caprice and fear that this time the King’s heart might escape her. And for a time, before and after the religious crisis of 1675, it seemed that Mme. de Sévigné’s red-haired friend the Princesse de Soubise might prove more than a passing royal fancy. “Everybody thinks that the King is no longer in love, and that Mme. de Montespan is torn between the consequences that might follow the return of his favors, and the danger of their not doing so, and the fear that he might turn elsewhere,” declared La Sévigné.
²

Athénaïs tried to disgust Louis by hinting that La Soubise was scrofulous, like a beautiful apple rotten inside, but this did not prevent Louis from checking for himself, and La Soubise’s son, Armand-Gaston, the Cardinal de Rohan, conceived in 1674 when Athénaïs was heavily pregnant with Mlle. de Nantes, was so much a Bourbon that there was little doubt as to his paternity. Eventually, though, La Soubise overreached herself, and fell into disgrace, as we saw in the previous chapter.

The Soubise skirmish was well won by the time Mme. de Ludres appeared in the King’s orbit, and no doubt Athénaïs was sanguine that she could see off this challenge as she had done so many others. Publicly, she appeared confident. “The other day, at play, Quanto had her head resting, with all familiarity, on the shoulder of her friend [Louis], one believed this affectation was to announce, ‘I am better off than ever.’” La Ludres, though, seemed ready to match the favorite’s cunning. Just as Athénaïs had done in the 1660s, she piqued Louis’s interest by maintaining a circle of suitors (which included Athénaïs’s brother Vivonne) while keeping herself chaste, angling after a bigger prize. Once again, Athénaïs retaliated by putting about a spiteful rumor: that La Ludres suffered periodically from revolting outbreaks of eczema. But Louis seemed as unconcerned about this as he had been with La Soubise’s purported ailments, and by 1677, Mme. de Sévigné’s country correspondent Bussy-Rabutin was commenting openly on the new affair, which was confirmed by a poem circulating in Paris.

La Vallière était du commun,

La Montespan était de la noblesse

La Ludres était chanoinesse.

Toutes trois ne sont que pour un:

C’est le plus grand de potentats

Qui veut assembler les Etats.
³

Athénaïs and Isabelle were now openly at war, each assembling a campful of friends who cut each other in public and sniped viciously in private. Mme. de Thianges was particularly obvious in her defense of her sister, going so far as to strike the new mistress on meeting her and giving her murderous glares when etiquette kept them apart.

A more surprising ally was Mme. de Maintenon. While the engagement of the governess had proved to be a great tactical error on Athénaïs’s part, as the war of the King’s conscience had shown, the two women were quick to bury their differences when the King was besieged by an outsider. Athénaïs was in the last months of pregnancy, not the best time to press home her advantage with the King, and accepted an invitation to stay at Mme. de Maintenon’s country estate. Here Athénaïs gave birth to her sixth child by the King, Mlle. de Blois, on 4 April. La Maintenon’s magnanimity did not extend to caring for the little girl, the fruit of the sin the governess had tried so earnestly to prevent: both she and her brother the Comte de Toulouse, born the next year, were consigned instead to the care of Mme. Colbert, assisted by a Mme. de Jussac.

Meanwhile, Isabelle de Ludres had been profiting by the favorite’s absence and insinuating herself with the ladies of the court, who began to show her the same respect they had reserved for Athénaïs, rising in her presence even before the Queen, and sitting down only when she gave the sign. It was this gesture that alerted Marie-Thérèse to the fact that her husband had gone astray yet again, but she declared that she would take no action since, extraordinarily, “that is the affair of Mme. de Montespan.” La Ludres even went so far as to fake a pregnancy, convinced that a child would vanquish her rival.

Sadly for Isabelle, she was not nearly as good a psychologist as Athénaïs. Louis’s pride would not suffer that he be preempted, and he was furious at the pretentious airs she put on when he had given her no encouragement to act as
maîtresse en titre.
Disgusted by her conceit, he cut her in public and in an instant the court followed suit. All that was accomplished was that he returned penitently to Athénaïs, who was delighted to forgive him, and came back to Versailles as though nothing had happened. Isabelle retreated to the country for a month, then recommenced her service in July. Her time in the sun had been very short. From queening it over the duchesses, she found herself reduced once more to one of Madame’s maids. The German princess, who kept her spiteful feelings about Athénaïs for her letters, was less intimidated by the cast-off girl, and remarked, as she played with a pair of compasses, “I ought to scratch out these eyes that have done so much damage!” Isabelle replied mournfully that she couldn’t care less, since her beautiful eyes had not secured what she wished for.

La Ludres bore her shame proudly for a while, leaving the room with an absent air when the King appeared and ostentatiously turning her head away from the Queen at Mass. If she had lost all her power, she was determined at least to be respected but, like Louise de La Vallière, she found the daily contact with her victorious rival insupportable, and eventually expressed a desire to retreat to a convent in the Rue du Bac in Paris. There was nothing Louis loathed more than a long face, and he had forgotten his passion for her so completely that when her request was put to him he answered sardonically, “What? Is she still here?” If there was a warning in this, Athénaïs was not inclined to heed it.

Quinault’s opera
La Gloire de Niquée
commemorated the love triangle of the year, transforming Isabelle de Ludres into Io, the nymph whose punishment for seducing Jupiter is metamorphosis into a miserable heifer, lowing her inarticulate grief at her abandonment. Although Athénaïs was furious, and everyone else highly amused, to find herself represented as the puffing jealous matriarch Juno rather than the delectable nymph, there was no doubt as to who came off better in the struggle for Jupiter/Louis’s affections. Mme. de Sévigné describes the return of “Juno triumphant” to Versailles rather critically: “What triumph at Versailles! What redoubled pride! What certain establishment! What Duchesse de Valentinois!
⁴
...What recovered possession! I spent an hour in this chamber, she was in bed, dressed, coiffed, she was resting for the
medianoche
. . . she found in herself all ‘the glory of Niquée,’ delivering her lines with great superiority over the poor Io, and laughing at those who had the audacity to complain of her. Imagine to yourself all that an ungenerous pride can do and say in triumph, and you will be close to it.” Despite this strong disapproval, the Marquise was forced to concede that Athénaïs was quite charming and gracious in her conversation with her.

Mme. de Sévigné also expressed her astonishment that the attachment between Louis and Athénaïs seemed closer than ever; indeed, almost unearthly. As always, Louis spoke his love in gifts, and Athénaïs appeared so covered with diamonds that she seemed to the courtiers like “a brilliant divinity.” Her policy of not accepting jewelry made her extremely popular, because Louis circumvented it by organizing a discreet “lottery,” in which, for appearances’ sake, other ladies, too, could “win” jewels, decorated boxes, or Chinese vases. As ever, the couriers of Europe were kept gratifyingly busy relaying the latest munificence of the Sun King to his
reine sultaine.

Louis seemed more than ever bound to the sensuality of his mistress. He delighted in her body, in her languorous capacity for pleasure, in the efforts she made to constantly divert, surprise and please him. Even in pregnancy, Louis found her desirable, perhaps more so, as he loved superabundance in everything. It was just as well, for by September, Athénaïs was pregnant yet again. Even so, she went with the King when he departed for what would be the final campaign of the Dutch wars in February 1678. She suffered a good deal from fever on the creeping, freezing journey, but as usual kept her illness to herself, knowing Louis’s exigency on the subject. On Valentine’s Day, the royal party paused at Vitry-le-François, where the townspeople, in their finest clothes, presented Marie-Thérèse with a gift of sweet-meats and their second Queen with a decorated basket of ripe pears.

This campaign represented the strenuous conclusion of six years of war that were to leave France triumphant as the dominant nation in Europe, but severely damaged financially as a consequence of the vast expenses incurred. After the French conquest of Franche-Comté in 1674, the outlook had been positive for Louis and for France, but the next year, the mood darkened. The Maréchal de Turenne was killed, and the Prince de Condé hung up his spurs and retired to Chantilly. Valenciennes was taken in 1677, by a force commanded by Louis and Monsieur, but the victory was soured for Louis by his jealousy of the popular reaction to his brother’s skill. When the brothers rode into Paris, Monsieur was received delightedly, with cries of “
Vive le Roi et Monsieur qui a gagné la bataille,
” the use of the singular implying that it was Monsieur, not Louis, who had won the battle. Needless to say, Monsieur was never allowed to set a dainty, high-heeled foot on a battlefield again. Following the Siege of Ghent, the conflict ended with the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. Louis renounced some of his conquests, but retained twelve towns which were to be refortified. He also succeeded in retaining control of the Franche-Comté region. Holland, meanwhile, received a favorable trade agreement, but no monetary compensation.