Athenais (7 page)

Whatever the state of the Duc de Mortemart’s finances, he could have aimed for a much better future for his beautiful daughter. A Montespan was a poor match for a Mortemart. So why was the marriage allowed to go ahead? Was Athénaïs really in love with Montespan? Both had passionate natures, so maybe the drama and sorrow of the duel caused them to experience emotional excitement as love. Perhaps the Duc de Mortemart wished to marry off his daughter quickly to avoid speculation about the now disreputable Noirmoutiers? Perhaps the family were glad of any replacement, given Athénaïs’s age? Or perhaps she herself realized that, as she was relatively poor, a great marriage was becoming increasingly unlikely and that, as a married woman, she would at least have the freedom to turn her social success to advantage.

Was it possible that the marriage was hastened because Athénaïs was already pregnant by Montespan? Their first child was born nine months after the wedding. However, since the contract had been signed in January, it seems unlikely first that even if she had been carrying a baby, Athénaïs could have been aware of it so soon, and secondly that the pregnancy should so conveniently run over term. Since Athénaïs later proved to be highly fertile, it is more likely that her child was conceived on her honeymoon. The modesty remarked upon by all who knew her in her early seasons at court was unlikely to have been compromised, given that Athénaïs knew her virginity was essential currency in the marriage market. She had been tainted already by the Noirmoutiers affair, and must have been anxious to avoid further scandalous rumors, particularly since without, as yet, a powerful male protector, she needed to focus her social ambition on her popularity within the Queen’s circle. Beauty can be as tyrannical to those who possess it as it is to those who lack it, and a beautiful woman must often make light of her attractions, attempting to impress by her conduct so as not to be exposed to the envy of her uglier sisters. If Athénaïs’s modesty was, as was subsequently suggested, a calculated ploy, it would have been aimed at the cultivation of an unthreatening reputation, and to undo this with a shotgun wedding would have been to undermine that very calculation.

Whatever the respective motivations of their families, the marriage contract between Louis-Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin and Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart was signed on 28 January 1663, only a week after Noirmoutiers was exiled. It is extraordinary that such a decision could have been taken in seven days. Among the noble signatures on the contract, those of royalty are noticeable by their absence. No couple of the Montespans’ status could be married without the King’s consent, and it would have been usual to have at least one royal validation. Yet apparently, none of the royal family, not even Diane’s great friend Anne of Austria, could be prevailed upon to sign their names next to that of Montespan’s heretical uncle.

Despite the haste of the marriage, some settlements were arranged. Only 60,000 livres of Athénaïs’s dowry was paid outright, and not to Montespan but to his parents, who were to give the couple an annual allowance of 5 percent on the capital. The rest of the dowry was to be inherited on the deaths of the Duc and Duchesse de Mortemart: in the meantime, they, too, would pay the Montespans an allowance, raised from the rents on their Brittany estate. Such strict limitations are indicative not only of the Mortemarts’ lack of ready cash, but perhaps also of a certain wariness of their son-in-law’s reputation for gambling and extravagance. Was the Duc attempting to assuage his conscience about such an ill-considered marriage, and to protect his daughter, by reining in the spending habits of her husband? With a more generous contribution from the Gondrin side of the family, the couple would have an income of 22,500 livres a year, a respectable sum. Its equivalent today would be about $120,000 to $130,000 — wealthy by most people’s standards, but nowhere near millionaire status. It would have been impossible, for example, for the Montespans to afford the fifty-three domestic servants considered necessary for an aristocratic couple in
La Maison Reglée,
a conduct manual published in 1692.

However, they did manage a smart wedding. The marriage was celebrated at the imposing church of St. Sulpice in Paris on 6 February 1663. Five days later, the Gondrins gave a reception at the Hôtel d’Antin, and Athénaïs was established in the world as the Marquise de Montespan.

The Montespans took lodgings in the Rue Taranne, on the left bank of the Seine in the St. Germain des Prés district. Although their home was quite modest, the quarter was beginning to supersede the Marais as the most fashionable aristocratic area. Athénaïs continued her court attendance, appearing on 22 February as a shepherdess in a new ballet across the river at the Louvre, along with Louise de La Vallière. Because of his disgraced uncle, it was difficult for her husband to appear with her, and it must have been clear to Athénaïs that the obligation to advance the family cause in royal circles fell on her shoulders. Conventionally, the role of court wives was to promote good relations that could lead to appointments for their husbands and marriage alliances for their children. Athénaïs, unlike other brides, was unable to do this in partnership with her husband, so effectively she had to embark on her career alone.

Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that marriage had not tempered Montespan’s appetite for spending, and the newlyweds were in a constant state of financial embarrassment thanks to his carelessness. From the beginning, he involved his wife in his debts. He borrowed 24,000 livres from his mother against Athénaïs’s dowry, and another 18,000 on the rents of the duchy of Bellegarde, part of his family’s estates, in both their names. The merchants of Paris provided further fuel for his extravagance. He ran up debts of 1,500 livres with one Rémy Marion, 1,800 with Jean Opéron, a carriage-maker, 900 with a master wheelwright named Jean Hebert. Later, on the night before she was due to dance in the ballet
The Birth of Venus,
Athénaïs was forced to take her husband to see two lawyers, Rollet and Parque, to try to prevent him from being arrested for debt. This time he owed 2,170 livres to two merchants, but they were persuaded by 1,000 livres to drop the action. Again and again, Athénaïs was dragged into his sordid machinations to raise money and humiliated into begging for clemency from their creditors. At one point, Montespan even pawned his wife’s pearl earrings to a merchant in the Place Maubert.

Montespan had his own ambitions and, seeing that there was little hope of a future at court, he convinced himself that he could make his fortune in the army. Although France was at peace, a political quarrel presented a juicy opportunity for him to realize his aim. By a treaty of the previous year, Charles IV, the Duke of Lorraine, had agreed to cede the town of Marsal to the French King. Cunningly, he then reneged on this promise on the grounds that the treaty had been ratified only by his nephew. Louis, eager to flex his military muscles, declared that he would lead an expeditionary force to convince the Duke to honor his word, and Montespan eagerly volunteered his sword.

War was an expensive business. A gentleman was expected to finance his own retinue of men, arms and horses and to cover his traveling expenses. And Montespan relished the chance to show off his patriotism with the most magnificent entourage he could muster. In August 1663, he borrowed another 500 livres, and then obliged Athénaïs to accompany him to a moneylender in the Rue des Anglais, where he obtained 7,750 livres, on condition that the money was used to finance his military efforts. He took 2,000 livres in advance on his allowance from the Duc de Mortemart, and 500 livres from his brother-in-law Vivonne. Clearly, his wife’s father and brother were ignorant of the debts Montespan had already contracted, since both he and Athénaïs were under twenty-five, the legal age for borrowing. Montespan had unscrupulously persuaded three Parisian merchants to underwrite his loans in secret. Although Montespan pompously swore that he needed the money to do his duty to the King, in fact, the war was merely a convenient pretext for raising money to meet his astronomical gaming debts. The expedition departed in great state on 25 August, but by the time it reached Metz the Duke of Lorraine had been persuaded to honor his promise, disappointingly without a single shot being fired. Montespan returned in September in debt to the tune of 13,000 livres, and having failed to do anything to improve his standing with the King.
¹

If Athénaïs was angered by this expensive damp squib, she may not have had leisure to do much about it, for by November she was preparing the apartment in the Rue Taranne as a lying-in chamber in readiness for the birth of her first child. In the rarefied world of the
précieuses
at the Hôtel d’Albret, childbirth was a conversational hypothesis, a symbol of nature’s tyranny over love. But no amount of intellectualizing could prepare Athénaïs for the terrifying ordeal to come.

What kind of experience could Athénaïs expect as the birth approached? For a start, certainly a grubby one as bathing, thought to dangerously relax the womb, was discouraged during pregnancy. Regardless of the historical commonplaces which abound about the dangers of childbirth in early modern Europe, we should not overlook what an emotionally and physically daunting prospect it presented on an individual level. “
Femme grosse a un pied dans la fosse,
” ran a French proverb — a pregnant woman has one foot in the grave. Death — of child, mother or both — was a horrifying reality. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France, forty women in every thousand died in childbirth. Mortality was particularly high among the upper classes, where the practice of wet-nursing led to a larger number of pregnancies. Some aristocratic women were alarmingly prolific. Two of Athénaïs’s contemporaries, the Duchesses de Brion and Noailles, had more than twenty children apiece, and one frighteningly fertile mother, the Presidente de Marbeuf, gave birth thirty-one times. So Athénaïs would undoubtedly have known of women who had not survived childbirth. The fear of giving birth to an abnormal child, interpreted as a punishment for the sins of the parents, was also powerful. Any complication during the birth could mean hours of potentially fatal agony, as seventeenth-century obstetrics could offer no aid in the event of a breech birth or a strangulating umbilical cord. It was not uncommon for a child to be dismembered in the birth canal in order to save the mother. The introduction of forceps — the earliest model was little more than a holy-water pistol, designed to baptize a dying child — often damaged the baby. Caesarean sections were occasionally performed on a mother who was already dead, although if a surgeon deemed it likely that the mother would die anyway, the operation could be performed, with the father’s permission, without anesthetic on a conscious woman.

Usually, female friends or relatives came to assist at a mother’s lying-in. No one thought it worth recording the details of Athénaïs’s first delivery, but perhaps Diane came from the Parisian convent where she was lodging, or Mme. de Thianges from the Louvre. It is likely that Athénaïs would have had a midwife; as, interestingly, she was due to give birth at the same time as Louise de La Vallière, the King’s mistress, it is possible that she followed the new trend set by Louis and engaged a male midwife. Whoever was present, if the child’s presentation was not normal — that is, head first — there was little that could be competently done. Closeted in an overheated, airless bedroom, fires blazing, the only painkiller Athénaïs could hope for was religion. It was the only recourse. During the birth of Louis XIV, a relay of bishops had prayed around the clock for his mother, Anne. Catholic women often had a Marian girdle placed on their agonized bodies. The mother’s friends might support her by reciting the special prayers to the Virgin recommended by the Church: “Obtain for me by Your Grace ...the favor to let me suffer with patience the pain that overwhelms me and let me be delivered from this ill. Have compassion on me, I cannot endure without your help.”

Athénaïs, like most women, may have been especially terrified by her first confinement. In the event, she proved herself splendidly healthy, accomplishing nine live births in total. Her first child, Marie-Christine, was baptized on 17 November at St. Sulpice, where Athénaïs had recited her marriage vows nine months before. Athénaïs was strong enough to return to her society duties almost immediately, a strength which would prove vital in the future. At court, Louise de La Vallière was enduring the same dreadful experience, compounded in her case by the necessity for secrecy. As Louise went into labor, Madame passed through her chamber on the way to Mass, and Louise had to pretend that her groans were caused by colic. As soon as Madame was gone, Louise told her doctor (the rather unfortunately named Monsieur Boucher): “Hurry up! I want to be delivered before she comes back!” The baby was smuggled away before she even had time to hold it in her arms, and she had to be up and in full court dress for an evening party. “Do you feel unwell, Mademoiselle?” inquired the Queen spitefully, noting Louise’s pale face. Louise muttered that the strongly scented tuberoses in the room were making her feel sick.

Louis was always anxious that his illegitimate children thrived, at least by the standards of the time. Five of his six legitimate children by Marie-Thérèse died young. He was particularly distressed by the death of “La Petite Madame,” his third daughter, Marie-Thérèse, who had managed to live a promising five years. Louis’s doctor told him that his children were weak because he wasted his virility on other women, giving to the Queen only “the dregs of the glass,” but it is more likely that generations of inbreeding were at the root of the problem. Later, Louis was to interpret the deaths of his legitimate children as a punishment from God for his incessant philandering.

If Athénaïs was to achieve her ambition of advancing at court, she had, like Louise, to be present immediately, since the ladies-in-waiting to Queen Marie-Thérèse were about to be appointed. Athénaïs’s job as maid-of-honor had been automatically forfeited on her marriage, and she needed a new court employment. The ladies-in-waiting — two princesses, two duchesses and two marquises or comtesses — were at the center of court life, provided with lodgings and a salary, and forming a constant entourage for the Queen. All the women at the court schemed and intrigued for a position in this circle. By February the field had narrowed to eight, a shortlist that included Athénaïs.