The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (14 page)

Ladies had to exercise care in committing adultery, for husbands whose wives too blatantly overstepped the bounds of decorum had the right to incarcerate them in a convent. In June 1671 the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lionne, exercised this prerogative after he caught his notoriously promiscuous wife and their married daughter in bed together, ‘with the Comte de Saulx between them’. Lionne himself was no paragon, for he interspersed his labours at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs with bouts of debauchery, but having previously tolerated his wife’s misdemeanours he now decided she had gone too far. In the acerbic words of Mme de Sévigné, ‘although her husband was accustomed to being cuckolded on his own account’, he could not accept that his son-in-law should be exposed to similar humiliation.
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Despite the undeniable provocation, Lionne’s action caused something of a flurry. Mme de Bouchet told her friend the Comte de Bussy: ‘Today everything is going topsy-turvy; husbands are in revolt and no longer wish to put up with anything from their wives. The poor ladies can no longer make cuckolds of them with impunity.’ Bussy, however, replied that she was wrong to think that husbands had ever been more patient, for the real difference was that until recently lovers had been more discreet.
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While one has to be guarded about drawing general conclusions from particular cases, numerous examples can be cited of court ladies who were lacking in virtue. Of Cardinal Mazarin’s five nieces, only the eldest, the Duchesse de Mercoeur (who died young), had an unblemished reputation. Saint-Simon remarked that it would be hard to decide which of her four sisters was the greatest libertine. The Comte de Bussy’s mistress Mme de Montglas was dismissed by one observer as ‘not much of a conquest’ as she was known to have had so many lovers. The Princesse de Bade’s own mother confided to the Savoyard ambassador ‘that she was in despair about her daughter’s intrigues at court’ and that ‘she brought her lovers back to the Hôtel de Soissons under her very nose’. After the Duchesse de Villeroy gave Mme de Sévigné’s son venereal disease in 1680, Mme de Coulanges remarked that the Duchesse had now infected so many people that it would constitute ‘cause for public rejoicing’ if she were cured.
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The Maréchale de la Ferté and her sister, the Comtesse d’Olonne, were both ‘notorious for their love affairs’. Although the Maréchale’s husband was a famously ‘hot-tempered man, he was perpetually gulled by her, or else he put up an excellent show of so being’. The Maréchale not only had numerous aristocratic lovers such as the Duc de Longueville (by whom she had a son) but, according to a scurrilous novel entitled
La France Galante,
she also had an affair with a Basque acrobat. He found her so insatiable that he declared it would be less tiring to perform all day long than to spend an hour with her. Her daughter-in-law, the Duchesse de la Ferté, was equally libidinous. One person later suggested that the Maréchale had deliberately chosen her as a bride for her son in the hope that the younger woman’s appalling conduct would distract attention from her own sins.
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Some court ladies were so disreputable that women of good character shunned them, but lack of virtue proved no bar to preferment at court. After Mme Dufresnoy, mistress of the Minister of War, Louvois, was made a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, the Marquis de La Fare declared that this was indicative of ‘the age’s prostitution’. Voltaire observed of this appointment that ‘in thus favouring his ministers’ inclinations the King hoped to vindicate his own’.
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Despite the fact that sodomy was a capital offence, homosexuality was thought to be widely practised at court. Some people were sure this accounted for the growing number of anal fistula and haemorrhoid cases though others, it is true, blamed the rise on rich food and more comfortable upholstery in coaches. On hearing of an outrage perpetrated by a homosexual coterie, the Comte de Bussy commented, ‘Our fathers were no more chaste than us, but they confined themselves to natural forms of debauchery; nowadays vices are embellished and refined.’ A novel entitled
La France Devenue Italienne
(sodomy was known as ‘the Italian vice’) satirised the court for being infested with homosexuality. Its anonymous author blamed women for the development, asserting that the reason why homosexual debauchery ‘reigned there more than anywhere in the world’, was that ‘the facility of all the ladies had rendered their charms … contemptible’.
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Throughout his life the King evinced what Saint-Simon described as ‘a just but singular horror for all inhabitants of Sodom.’ Nevertheless, however much he may have wanted to eradicate homosexuality at court, he was precluded from effective action because his own brother, Monsieur, was a notorious pederast. This flamboyant figure, who even went into battle heavily bejewelled and wearing make-up, took the Chevalier de Lorraine as his favourite. In early 1670 the King was furious when Monsieur demanded that he confer the revenues of two abbeys on the Chevalier. The King objected that Lorraine ‘led too libertine a life to possess benefices’ and let it be known that he believed that the Chevalier had committed ‘the infamous crime of sodomy with the Comte de Guiche and even with men who had been burnt for that crime in the [Place de] Grève’. When Monsieur protested, the Chevalier was arrested and exiled, though within two years the King relented and permitted his return. Monsieur himself remained incorrigible. Primi Visconti heard that when in the company of the Duc de Créqui, the Marquis de La Vallière and the Marquis d’Effiat, ‘they talked about young men like a group of lovers comparing the charms of young ladies.’
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The monarch at the centre of the court was a truly remarkable individual. Louis XIV had inherited the crown in 1643 when he was four years old. The early years of his reign had been troubled by a period of aristocratic insubordination and civil unrest known as the Fronde, but once this had been quelled the royal authority could hardly have been more comprehensively reasserted. By the time the King entered his forties his power was awesome and Primi Visconti was guilty of only slight hyperbole when he wrote, ‘Both within and without the realm all were submissive to him. He only had to desire something to have it. Everything, down to the weather, favoured him … Besides this, he had money, glory and, above all, fine health; in short, he lacked nothing but immortality.’ Somewhat surprisingly, however, this shrewd observer qualified this by saying that he did not envy the King ‘for, in spite of all this, I am sure he was not happy’.
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In some ways this would appear a curious statement, for the King himself left testimonials that he found his life pleasurable and fulfilling. In his memoir,
Reflections on the Calling of a King,
he told his son that, providing one was up to the job, theirs was a ‘grand, noble and delicious’ occupation. Elsewhere he vividly described his exhilaration when he first immersed himself in royal business: ‘I could almost feel my spirits and my courage rising … I discovered something new about myself and joyfully wondered how I could have ignored it so long … I knew then that I was King and born for it.’
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Saint-Simon noted that the King ‘had a natural bent towards details’, and worked extremely hard. He seemingly coped admirably with the pressure. After spending hours in council he amazed people by the apparent ease with which he threw off the cares of government and gave himself over to pleasure. Naturally, however, there were times when he found his work stressful. Even while enthusing to the Dauphin about the satisfactions his position could afford, the King acknowledged ‘it is not exempt from troubles, fatigues and anxieties.’ He even noted that on occasion uncertainty could induce feelings of despair. In private it seems that he intermittently succumbed to depression. A casual mistress of the King’s, Mlle des Oeillets, related that, when with her, the King did not disguise that he ‘had his troubles … Sometimes he sat for whole hours by the fire, very pensive and heaving sighs.’ Her testimony could perhaps be discounted were it not for the fact that, much later in the reign, Louis’s morganatic wife, Mme de Maintenon, said much the same thing. She told a confidante that it fell to her to soothe his ‘griefs … his melancholy and his vapours; sometimes he is seized by sobs which he cannot master.’
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When France was experiencing difficulties during the Dutch War there were times when Louis fell prey to what might have been psychosomatic illnesses. In 1673 he was tormented by insomnia, and such sleep as he did have was disturbed by ‘dreams, cries and agitations’. For the past four or five years he had also suffered from sporadic fits of ‘the vapours’, a new ailment, which became fashionable at court after the King was diagnosed as a victim. This vague term encompassed a wide series of disorders, which could take the form of headaches, digestive problems and general malaise, ‘which constricts the heart and fogs the mind’. The royal physicians prescribed purgative broths and emollient enemas and, on the whole, these seemed to contain the problem, although in January 1675 the King was assailed by ‘a violent vapour which made his head spin’. This soon passed but in late September the complaint returned in a much fiercer form. The King was plagued by severe headaches, shivering, hot flushes, shortness of breath, lack of appetite, depression, yawning fits, a sensation of weakness in the legs and ‘dryness of stomach’. He did not have a fever, but when he managed to sleep he often woke drenched in sweat. He complained of having a permanently bitter taste in his mouth and the doctors noted that his tongue was heavily coated. Once again d’Aquin prescribed purgative broths and enemas, and insisted that the King must be bled, despite the fact that Louis maintained that this remedy did not agree with him.
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After six weeks the crisis passed. D’Aquin had no doubts as to what had caused the problem: he declared that these vapours originated from a melancholic humour in the spleen, as was shown by the fact that they were accompanied by depression and a desire for solitude. He explained that, from the spleen, ‘They slide through the arteries to the heart and lungs, where they excite palpitations and anxieties … Rising from there to the brain, they cause giddiness and head spinning by agitating the spirits of the optical nerves.’ D’Aquin also believed that overwork had contributed to the attack, which had been exacerbated by the King’s blood being overheated by ‘the continual fatigues of war.’
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However, other explanations can be put forward for the King’s ill health at this time. It is possible that the medical treatment he received actually undermined his constitution. Certainly, some people at court thought that Dr Vallot, who died in 1672, made the King take much too strong purgatives. In December 1673 there were concerns that d’Aquin was also overdosing him with laxatives. As d’Aquin indignantly noted, ‘The natural goodness of the courtiers, and their remarkable capacity in all things, particularly medicine, made them say many things against this remedy, of which the King took little notice, and shut them up by saying that he found himself very well for it.’
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It is also possible that the King occasionally took substances which no doctor had prescribed and which had an adverse effect on him. Saint-Simon claimed that the reason why the King took ‘a highly fashionable bath attendant of Paris’ named Quentin Vienne into his service as a valet was that Vienne had supplied Louis with ‘various drugs reputed to give opportunities of greater [sexual] satisfaction’.
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Furthermore, during the Affair of the Poisons it was suggested that around this time the King’s mistress had been feeding him love philtres, which she obtained illicitly. This gave rise to suspicions that the curious symptoms suffered by the King in 1675 had been caused by cantharides poisoning.

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It was not just the conduct of state affairs that kept the King under pressure for, as he himself warned his son, ‘Our work is sometimes less difficult than our amusements.’ Louis could not but be acutely aware that there were very few moments in the day when he could escape the court’s scrutiny and he regarded it as his duty to maintain an impeccably regal aura at all times. Primi Visconti observed that though the King occasionally appeared relaxed in private, he would instinctively straighten his bearing and assume a more dignified expression if he thought there was any chance he could be glimpsed through an open door. Courtiers were in attendance even as he dressed in the mornings or sat on the close stool, and a large crowd likewise watched him eat his dinner or retire to bed. Since the King knew he was the cynosure of all eyes his every gesture and look were carefully weighed and carried out with an immaculate poise which so impressed the Abbé Choisy that he declared it was no flattery to describe him as ‘great even in the slightest things.’ Even Saint-Simon, often so critical of the King, wrote admiringly of ‘his polite chivalrous manner which he … knew so well how to combine with stateliness and propriety’.
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However, the paradox was that although the King was in a sense on permanent display, his was in many ways a very isolated existence. Saint-Simon noted, ‘The awe inspired by his appearance was such that wherever he might be his presence imposed silence and a degree of fear’, and though one of Louis’s generals claimed that he had the knack of putting people at their ease, it is clear that even quite experienced courtiers could be overcome by shyness in his company. The playwright Racine berated himself for the way he became tongue-tied in the royal presence, despite the fact that he saw the King quite often. In 1685 the wit and presence of mind of Mme de Sévigné’s daughter counted for nothing when she was presented to the King, for she was so ‘totally disconcerted by that awesome majesty of his’ that she quite forgot everything she had intended to say.
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