Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (13 page)

On the other hand the austere Spanish King surely never enjoyed a season like that first brilliant summer of the King's personal rule. They had all known hard times, even Marie-Thérèse with her sad childhood. Now they were free. And everyone was so young. Louis and the pregnant Marie-Thérèse were both twenty-two; Monsieur was twenty; Henriette-Anne's seventeenth birthday was in June. The ladies-in-waiting to Madame such as Louise de La Vallière, who had managed to join her service, were very young too, a fact reflected in the nickname given to these female attendants: ‘the flower garden'. There were picnics. There were moonlight expeditions. Ballet as ever was the centre of graceful amusement. On one particular occasion at Fontainebleau, there was a Court Ballet in which the chief dancers were the King, Henriette-Anne and ‘the handsomest man at court', the Comte de Guiche (although much fancied by Monsieur, the Comte had declared himself in theatrical fashion in love with Madame: not welcome news to one of Monsieur's jealous temperament). A mechanical way was found to move the stage slowly from one sylvan alley to another so that ‘an infinity of persons' approached imperceptibly in an endless dance, as it were, to the music of time.
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There is one unforgettable image which emerges from that celestial season that comprised – time would show – the happiest hours Henriette-Anne would ever know. Madame had gone swimming with her ladies, as she did every day in midsummer, travelling by coach on account of the heat. But she returned on horseback, followed by her ladies ‘in gallant attire, a thousand feathers nodding on their heads', accompanied by the King ‘and all the youth of the court'. Then there was a supper and to the sound of violins, they drove in carriages round the canals for the greater part of the night.
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The only prominent person in all this who was not young was the now-dowager Queen Anne. Increasingly she was alienated from the joyous revelry, and it was at this point that the advanced age at which she had borne her sons began to tell: for she would be sixty in October.

If Henriette-Anne really was the Queen of Hearts, her ambition, it seemed to royal-watchers at court – and who was not permanently gazing at the King? – that one heart she had captured was that of her brother-in-law. There can be no question that at some point in that summer Louis and Henriette-Anne fell gently, happily in love, perhaps not even understanding what had happened to them for a while. Each incarnated the other's ideal. As Marie-Thérèse would have made a good Queen of Spain, Henriette-Anne, gracious and cultivated, would certainly have made a wonderful Queen of France. The private life of Louis XIV might indeed have read very differently if, by some diplomatic twist and chance, the Infanta had not actually been available. Anne of Austria would have promoted her other niece instead, and given the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, might well have succeeded. This is not to postulate improbable lifelong fidelity on the part of Louis XIV. Nevertheless the respect he subsequently felt for his intelligent sister-in-law, and the true, deep affection he always bore her – a letter from him years later attests to it
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– reveals the best of his attitudes to the female sex. And she was a princess. Somewhere an opportunity was missed.

At the time the romance flourished by day and by night – or at any rate much of the night. Much of it took place at Fontainebleau: this had been the favourite residence of François I, who had transformed it into a Renaissance palace in the sixteenth century. Now, with its extensive park and magic forest close by – a Desert, noble and beautiful', Loret called it – Fontainebleau seemed made for private pleasure. The court stayed there from April to December 1661 (it would prove the longest sojourn of the entire reign).
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Louis, for all his marital complacency, had by no means lost that romantic streak which had been so fatally aroused by Marie Mancini. Henriette-Anne's marriage to Monsieur, following those halcyon few weeks when she had enjoyed his passion, had settled into a series of little jealous games on the subject of their mutual admirers. Monsieur, anxious to provide himself with a son and heir for the new house of Orléans, was at least assiduous in his marital duties. So that was not the issue. The problem was: who – even his wife – could concentrate on Monsieur when there was an opportunity of enjoying the chivalrous admiration of his elder brother …?

The romance was however short-lived. And it remains open to question whether that short period encompassed a full-blown love affair. One recent writer on the subject has asked: what on earth would have stopped them?
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That might be true of two modern celebrities, but the answer for a seventeenth-century monarch and his brother's wife was: a great deal. Significantly, the phrase ‘sister-in-law' did not exist: such relationships were considered straightforwardly incestuous. In the eyes of the Church, and thus in the eyes of both Louis and Henriette-Anne by innate training, they were now brother and sister. One may suppose therefore that there were kisses and perhaps a little more, but not the full consummation which would have put both of them in an alarming state of mortal sin. Since a favoured method of birth control at this time was coitus interruptus, drawing back from the ultimate act was something which was understood.

The Comtesse de La Fayette who wrote down her memories of Henriette-Anne, and whose great novel
The Princess of Cleves
concerned a romantic, illegitimate (but unconsummated) love, analysed the relationship as follows. It had all been too easy for them, she wrote, two people born with gallant, that is to say flirtatious, temperaments, thrown together every day in the midst of pleasures and entertainments. Louis and his sister-in-law were ‘on the point of falling in love if not further'. Yet there was an innocence about it all, certainly on her behalf. Henriette-Anne believed that she only wanted to please Louis as a sister-in-law, but ‘I think she was also attracted to him in another way. Similarly she thought he only appealed to her as a brother-in-law although he actually attracted her as something rather more.’
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The end of the affair came with a twist which would have recommended itself to Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, that ‘excellent comic poet' and playwright known as Molière. He enjoyed his first great success with
Les Précieuses ridicules
in November 1659 when he was in his late thirties (in 1663 he would receive a pension of a thousand louis from the King). It was of course the appalled reaction of Anne of Austria which precipitated the drama: how could she not be shocked by conduct which struck at the very heart of her religion – and her family?

Using Madame de Motteville as her intermediary, Queen Anne began by warning her niece-cum-daughter-in-law of the dangers of her misplaced conduct, those night-time expeditions ‘against propriety and health' and so forth. Henriette-Anne promised to improve, but in true comedic fashion actually wove a plot with Louis by which they could continue their flirtation in secret. ‘Her natural sentiments were against prudence,' commented the lady-in-waiting sadly. The stratagem was for the King to feign admiration for one of the young ladies in Henriette-Anne's ‘flower garden' and under this pretence come calling as often as he pleased. It can hardly be a surprise that in the true manner of such cheerful conspiracies, Louis actually fell for the girl who was supposed to be the cover.
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This was Louise de La Vallière. She was not the first candidate: that was Mademoiselle de Pons, who was recalled to Paris to look after her uncle Maréchal d'Albret, after which Louis turned his attentions to Mademoiselle de Chémérault before finally fixing on Louise. In the event she was considered particularly suitable because she had such an evident, touching crush on the King. What Saint-Simon was to denounce angrily a generation later as ‘the eager homage, the near-worship' felt ‘against all reason' for royalty was already experienced in the heart of this young girl.
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Perhaps it was the portrait of the King in her home in the Touraine which had ignited it, perhaps it was that visit the handsome young man paid to the château of Blois on his way to his marriage.

Observers were apt to scrutinise the texts of the Court Ballets as well as the Ballets themselves for pointers to the future. At the
Ballet of the Seasons
of 23 July 1661 Henriette-Anne danced the goddess Diana surrounded by nymphs. One of these was Louise. Her appropriate role was that of Spring; in the lines of the poet Benserade: ‘This beauty only just born … It is Spring with her flowers / Who promises a good year.’
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The Ballet was such a success that it was repeated five times in one month. Unknown for the next few weeks was the fact that Henriette-Anne had conceived her first child by Monsieur on or around the same date (Marie-Louise d'Orléans was born on 27 March 1662). Monsieur's jealousy and indignation at the behaviour of his wife and brother took the form – as his jealousy continued to do where Henriette-Anne was concerned – of relentless marital attention. Besides, he needed a son, or failing that a daughter, who in true Bourbon fashion would make an excellent royal marriage.

Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière was born on 6 August 1644: she was thus a few weeks younger than her mistress Madame and nearly six years younger than Louis. She came from a stoutly royalist family, minor nobility from the Touraine. Her father was a soldier who had been notably brave at the battle of Rocroi, fought a few days after Louis XIV's accession. Louise, with one brother two years older, enjoyed a happy if austere childhood at the little manor of La Vallière at Reugny, north-east of Vouvray, until her father's death when she was seven. Her mother then married again, the Marquis de Saint-Rémy. Perhaps the chant of the Carmelites next door to her childhood home made a permanent impression upon the sensibilities of Louise. She certainly showed all her life an ardently religious temperament and a seriousness on the subject which put to shame many of her contemporaries at the French court.

It may therefore seem surprising that she did not opt for a convent in youth (a decision which would have spared her on the one hand great personal torment and on the other hand the delights of the most glamorous lover in her known world). But this is to misunderstand the financial circumstances in which a girl entered a particular convent. She needed a dowry. It is true that the dowry for a nun – the bride of Christ – was by custom much less than that needed for a bride of a more humdrum human being; which is why in large families with many daughters, the eldest might be lucky enough to get a husband, the youngest lucky enough to enter an agreeable not-too-harshly-restricted convent. Looks were important: convents could be regarded as useful dustbins, remembering how Marie Mancini's mother had thought her plainness designated her for the convent, not marriage, although she was the middle sister. Personal preference did not as a whole come into it: the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles, who had nine daughters, were praised for being ‘so Christian and so tender' for allowing them the choice of the veil or not. The continual denunciations of the preachers against parents who shut unwilling children up in convents shows how common the practice was.
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But nunneries were not the only option. A seventeenth-century young woman of no fortune above the working class (whose females simply found work wherever they could) could also look for a richer household where she would serve in a genteel way. There she would be maintained; there, having formed the vital social connections, she might eventually find a husband.

In the case of Louise, her first entry, as has been noted, was into the household of the three younger Orléans princesses (Gaston's daughters) at Blois, who were roughly her own age. Sharing their lives, she was educated, and even more to the point, she was instructed in royal ways, learning for example that vital court art of dancing.
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And of course all the little princesses planned in a dreamy way, led by the eldest Marguerite-Louise, to marry their august cousin Louis XIV when they grew up.

Louise had a sweet, submissive character. She was eager to please, eager to obey, all this coupled with a natural modesty which was very much to the contemporary taste in a young woman entering society: the description ‘a violet hidden in the grass' was applied to her by Madame de Sévigné with approval.
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However, this hidden violet had from her country upbringing a tomboy side: she was a notably good rider, able to control a Barbary horse bareback with only a silken cord to guide it. A riding accident in youth had resulted in the fracture of her ankle and she walked with a slight limp, but this did not, it seems, affect her dancing or her riding. As we have seen with Marie Mancini, the ability to ride with skill and daring was an important aspect of the early loves of Louis XIV because it ensured a certain privacy (Henriette-Anne was another excellent equestrienne).

As for looks, nobody ever called Louise beautiful but everybody called her appealing: ‘the grace more beautiful than beauty', as the Abbé de Choisy wrote in his memoirs, quoting La Fontarne.
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Her evident vulnerability – here if ever was the innocent virginity which the preachers constantly emphasised as the ideal state of every young girl – was also part of the package. A local admirer, Jacques de Bragelongue, had been dismissed by Louise's mother as being too poor but there was no question of anything damaging in the relationship.
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This innocence was something that attracted the Church and the seducer in equal measure, if for precisely the opposite reasons.

If Louise had a fault physically by contemporary standards, it was her lack of the properly lavish bosom. To conceal her flatchestedness she was wont to wear neckties with floppy bows acting as a kind of padding.
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A childishly thin throat gave an air of defencelessness. On the other side of the coin she had very pale, almost silvery fair hair, huge blue eyes with what was generally held to be a melting regard, and a soft voice.