Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (27 page)

* 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.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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* 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

O
n 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’.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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 took 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’.
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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.
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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 …’
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Meanwhile Bossuet was not finding it altogether easy dealing with that other Magdalen whose penitence, it seemed, was incomplete. Was the Bishop the right man for the task? ‘He has plenty of intelligence,’ wrote Françoise, ‘but it is not the worldly wisdom of the court.’ Nor did he quite appreciate that Athénaïs might be a hard habit to break. There is an indication in his correspondence in the summer of 1675 that even the forty-eight-year-old prelate, a man of exemplary piety, felt her physical attraction. In an ambiguous letter on the subject of his heavy burden, he asked the Marquis de Bellefonds to ‘pray for me’ and ‘may God make all the man in me die’.
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To Louis, Bossuet reported that Athénaïs was calm enough, occupying herself with good works (as time would show, another aspect of her undoubted energy was an appetite for philanthropy). But he had come to understand that ending the liaison – stamping out ‘a flame so violent’ – was not the work of a day. The King returned from campaigning in August, but surely there was no danger: Madame de Montespan, no longer at court, resided at Clagny. It was Bossuet who observed with some foreboding: ‘Yes, Sire, but God would be more satisfied if Clagny was seventy leagues from Versailles.’

Bossuet was right. The thought of poor Athénaïs languishing was too much for the King; she was allowed back to court, but with some touching if slightly ludicrous caveats. The couple would never be alone together, or if they were, it would be in a room with glass windows so that the court could supervise their conduct and make sure it was sufficiently proper.

But perhaps the caveat was not so ludicrous after all. In May 1676 Athénaïs went on a restorative trip to the thermal baths at Bourbon, for the sake of her health (and figure). Bourbon, near Moulins in the Bourbonnais province south-east of Paris, was a spa which had been known since Roman times when its waters –
aquae Borvonis
– were praised by Vitruvius. There were other spas such as Vichy and Baréges, but this was the most fashionable one.
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And Athénaïs was duly given an extremely lavish welcome, with loyal addresses in every town through which she passed. The status of the King's
maîtresse en titre
surely demanded it. Ironically enough the local governor was Louise's brother, the Marquis de La Vallière. Athénaïs herself however was more interested in her new outlet, good works: she endowed twelve beds at the local poor-house and gave a considerable amount of money to local charities.
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In July however a scene took place at Clagny worthy of the most successful playwright at court, Racine. Great care was taken that ‘respectable ladies’ should be present as chaperones, and at first Louis spoke to his former mistress in grave tones as though he was some kind of cleric – a Bossuet. Athénaïs interrupted him: ‘It's useless to read me a sermon: I understand that my time is over.’ Then gradually the pair – who had not been alone together for fifteen months – withdrew to a windowed alcove, while the courtiers, including the respectable ladies, remained at a respectful distance. The conversation grew more intense, and later still more tender. ‘You're mad,’ said Athénaïs. ‘Yes, I am mad,' replied Louis ardently, ‘since I still love you.’ After this avowal, both King and Athénaïs made together a profound reverence to these venerable matrons’.
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Then they withdrew to her bedroom … This was the moment feared by Bossuet and Madame de Maintenon alike.

Athénaïs proceeded to make short work of some of the objects of the King's gallantry during his absence from her bed. The Princesse de Soubise proved not to be quite so virtuous a mature married woman as she had been as a teenager: there was a rumour that one of her children was the King's. Her husband however was remarkably complaisant about the association. After all, in the words of Saint-Simon: the family's rise was all Duc to the beauty of the Princesse de Soubise ‘and the use to which she put it’.

Isabelle de Ludres with her statuesque body and striking red-gold hair was a more serious contender. This royal affair began in the course of a minuet. The King gazed rapturously into Isabelle's beautiful blue eyes: ‘I am sure, Madame, that these
fripons
[rascals] have caused plenty of damage in their time’. Isabelle was ready with the appropriate gallant response: ‘Not as much as I would wish, Sire, for I know someone who still defends himself too strongly against their force’.
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Sure enough the King proceeded to lower his defences. What the Princesse de Soubise and Isabelle de Ludres lacked, it seemed, was the intelligence or wit to hold the King even if they had the spirit to capture him. Nevertheless, before Isabelle de Ludres could be thoroughly defeated, the court drama of her rivalry with Athénaïs had to take expression on the stage, in true Versailles fashion.
Isis,
an opera by Quinault and Lully, made a clear allusion to Isabelle as Io, who aroused the rage of Juno for daring to seduce Jupiter; Athénaïs was obviously caricatured as the jealous Juno to whom in the end Jupiter promised to be faithful. The whole court sang Io's lovely song from Act III: ‘It is a cruel offence / To appear beautiful / To jealous eyes,’ and Madame de Sévigné knew it by heart.
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