The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (18 page)

At first the King conducted his affair with Louise very discreetly. Their love burgeoned while the court was at Fontainebleau for the summer, but initially the King was careful not to see too much of Louise in the daytime. Instead, he waited until he and his entourage went on evening carriage rides, and then he would leave his own coach and stand for hours at the lowered window of Louise’s carriage, talking intently. The relationship was reportedly consummated in the apartment of the Duc de Saint-Aignan, who from the first had acted as ‘the confidant of this intrigue’. That autumn the court moved to Paris and, since Louise remained in the service of Louis’s sister-in-law, the King was able to see his mistress when he visited Madame. One lady recalled that he and Louise would withdraw together to a small room and, though they never shut the door, it might as well have been ‘barred with steel’, for no one dared to enter. After a time Louise took to feigning illness and the King would visit her as she lay in her bedchamber.
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Initially, all this was kept from the Queen. While she did have fears that the King was being unfaithful, she was more inclined to suspect that he was having an affair with Madame than to guess the true state of affairs. However, for reasons of her own the Comtesse de Soissons, the most senior lady in the Queen’s household, was determined to enlighten her. She leagued herself with her lover, the Marquis de Vardes, and tried to send the Queen an anonymous letter informing her of what was happening but the plan went awry when the letter failed to reach the Queen. A few months later, however, the Comtesse contrived to pass the news on orally to Marie-Thérèse and then pulled off the remarkable feat of persuading the King that it was the Duchesse de Navailles who had made the revelation. But the outcome of all this differed from the Comtesse’s expectations. She had calculated that once the Queen knew about Louise, the King would either be forced to discard his mistress or, if he was determined to continue with the relationship, to enlist the Comtesse’s aid when arranging assignations. In the event the King merely concluded that since his wife was now aware that Louise was his mistress there was much less need for secrecy. ‘Instead of telling the Queen daily that he came from visiting Madame, he now owned freely that he had been elsewhere.’
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By the summer of 1663 Louise was pregnant and this meant she could not continue in Madame’s household. The King installed her in a pavilion known as the Palais Brion in the grounds of the Palais Royal in Paris, and there she lived a fairly retired existence until the birth of her child. The baby arrived on the night of 18 December and was delivered by the celebrated obstetrician, Boucher, who had been sworn to secrecy. As prearranged by Colbert, Boucher then handed the child to a married couple named Beauchamp who had formerly been in domestic service with Colbert’s family. They were told that the baby boy was the illegitimate offspring of one of Colbert’s brothers although, since Olivier d’Ormesson heard that the King went regularly to see his child, they may have guessed the truth. Christened Charles, the baby died before his third birthday.
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Although the King had done what he could to hide the existence of his bastard son, he became much less guarded about flaunting his love for Louise. In May 1664 the court was invited to an entertainment lasting several days, the so-called ‘Fête of the Enchanted Island’. Though these festivities were in theory put on for Marie-Thérèse and her mother-in-law, Anne of Austria, everyone present had no doubt that Louise was the real guest of honour. During the summer of 1664 the King was regularly seen out hunting with his mistress and in October the King prevailed upon his mother, who until then had been disapproving of her son’s extramarital relationship, to receive Louise.

In January 1665 Louise gave birth to another son, Philippe, who, like his brother, was brought up secretly and died in infancy. By May she was once again regularly at the King’s side when he went out hunting and the following year her presence became still more conspicuous. The King’s respect for his mother had hitherto constrained him to show a degree of circumspection but Anne’s death, in January 1666, removed such inhibitions. When Olivier d’Ormesson attended a requiem mass for the Queen Mother he noted that Louise was prominently placed near the Queen, who had been obliged to take her into her service.

It turned out, however, that Louise was not unassailable. In the autumn of 1666 she produced a daughter by the King, christened Marie-Anne, who survived to adulthood. By the following year Louise was once again pregnant but her hold over the King appeared increasingly precarious and informed observers detected unmistakable signs that Louis had grown tired of her.

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Louise was supplanted by the Marquise de Montespan, a married woman whom she had considered a friend. Born in 1641, the Marquise was the daughter of Gabriel de Rochechouart, Duc de Mortemart. Her family lineage, which dated back to the eleventh century, was so illustrious that Mme de Montespan’s sister liked to claim that the Bourbons were mere parvenus in comparison. Originally christened Françoise, as an adult she had abandoned this commonplace name for the more distinctive and flamboyant Athénaïs, which accorded better with her personality.

In 1663, three years after becoming a maid of honour to the Queen, Athénaïs had married Louis-Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Marquis de Montespan. Since it was not a great match in material terms (Montespan already had debts, possibly from gambling) this might suggest that love had played a part in bringing them together. In theory Athénaïs had a dowry of 150,000 livres but at the time of her marriage her parents produced only 60,000. Even this sum was handed to Montespan’s parents and the young couple were only permitted the income. The balance of 90,000 livres was not payable till Athénaïs’s parents died, although she and her husband were entitled to the revenue from it. In theory they should have been able to manage on these amounts but they soon found themselves in financial difficulties and had to borrow money.

In early 1664, having already presented her husband with a daughter (a son followed in September 1665), Athénaïs was chosen to be a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. She soon became a favourite with Marie-Thérèse, who loved Mme de Montespan not only because she found her entertaining but also because she supposed her to be virtuous. This was not as naive as it may seem, for at the time others shared her opinion of Athénaïs’s good character. When the Comte de Saint-Pol tried to pursue her in 1666 the Duc d’Enghien had no doubt that he was unlikely to succeed in so ambitious an enterprise.
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The Queen also approved of the fact that Mme de Montespan took communion regularly and, while one cannot rule out the possibility that this was a cynical exercise deliberately designed to commend her to her mistress, there is good reason to believe that Athénaïs had a strong underlying faith, which did not desert her even when her behaviour most flagrantly contravened Church law. There is a story that, once she had become the King’s mistress, the Duchesse d’Uzès queried why, in her concern to maintain her Lenten fast, she even weighed her bread to ensure she did not eat too much. Athénaïs retorted that just because she was guilty of one sin, it did not mean she had to commit every other.
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Saint-Simon confirmed that she adhered to her religion with surprising tenacity. He recorded, ‘She had never sinned carelessly, for often … she had left the King to go and pray in her closet. Nothing would have induced her to miss a meatless day or a fast. She kept her Lents strictly and was most scrupulous in fasting during the whole time of her evil living … never showing the least sign of religious doubt or impiety.’
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Saint-Simon, who was not even born at the time Louis started his affair with Mme de Montespan, asserted that she tried to resist the King’s attractions. He claimed that as soon as she realised Louis was falling in love with her she pleaded with her husband to remove her from court, but Montespan failed to act on this. Things then progressed to a point where the temptation became too much for her. This seems implausible and conflicts with the recollections of others. Primi Visconti was told that Athénaïs set out to ensnare the King but that at first Louis was unimpressed, telling his brother, ‘She does what she can but I want none of it.’ Others maintain that Louise de La Vallière unwittingly brought ruin on herself. Believing that it would be a good way of keeping Louis amused, she arranged for Athénaïs to spend a great deal of time with them, with the result that the King ultimately came to prefer her company to Louise’s.
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The first contemporary reference to the King being attracted to Athénaïs comes from the Duc d’Enghien, who noted in October 1666 that Louis was showing an interest in her. He added that there was probably nothing in it but ‘to tell the truth she would well deserve it, because one could not be more witty or beautiful than her’.
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Enghien was not alone in considering Athénaïs a beauty, for everyone concurred that her looks were dazzling. Like Louise she was blonde with azure eyes, but her other features were far superior. She had what Primi Visconti considered ‘a perfect face’ with a nose that was ‘aquiline but well shaped’ and ‘a small vermilion mouth with very fine teeth’. Her figure – which after multiple pregnancies ran to fat – was more voluptuous than Louise’s and her shapely arms were also singled out for praise.
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But it was not just her beauty that made Athénaïs so exceptional. Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (the German princess who became Monsieur’s second wife in 1671 and who was known, like her predecessor, as Madame) recalled, ‘One was never bored with her,’ while another person praised her knack of making ‘the most serious subjects agreeable’. This was a trait she shared with her brother, the Duc de Vivonne, and her sister, Mme de Thianges. The three of them ‘gave universal pleasure through their singular way of talking, a blend of jokes, artlessness and refinement which was called “the Mortemart wit”.’ Their utterances were gloriously unpredictable and at times seemed to take even them by surprise, for they had ‘the gift of saying unusual and amusing things, always original, which nobody expected, not even themselves as they said them’. Athénaïs in particular had ‘a witty languishing manner’ that was wonderfully beguiling and possessed ‘a special turn of phrase and a gift for selecting the apt word that was all her own’. ‘It was enchanting to hear her,’ Saint-Simon declared.
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Unfortunately, few examples of her wit survive. Her letters give little hint of her humour and she herself declared that she much preferred the spontaneity of conversation to the ‘coldness’ of the written word. It was the way she phrased her remarks, quite as much as their witty content, which made them so irresistible and besides this, her gaiety had an infectious quality. There is an account of her and Monsieur going into ‘peals of laughter, which would have been audible at two hundred paces’ when the Chevalier d’Arvieux regaled the King with an amusing account of his diplomatic mission to Turkey. She also had a keen sense of the ridiculous and the King loved the way she could deflate pomposity. According to Primi Visconti, when people talked to him in an affected manner he would later laugh about it with Mme de Montespan. At other times they shared silly jokes together. Mlle de Montpensier recorded huffily that on one occasion when the three of them were travelling in a coach together the King and Mme de Montespan woke her with a start by shrieking, ‘We’re overturning!’
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In addition she was a marvellous mimic. She made everyone laugh by imitating Mme de Mecklembourg’s guttural way of speaking, which had acquired strange Germanic overtones after she married a foreigner. When the Savoyard ambassador Saint-Maurice was having an audience with the King in 1672, he noticed Mme de Montespan scrutinising him keenly and he guessed that this was so she could later ‘tell some tale to make his Majesty laugh at my expense and to imitate me, for she makes use of everything to divert him’.
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Mme de Montespan was also a talented raconteuse who could spin ‘a good yarn to make the King laugh’. Mlle de Montpensier fondly recalled Mme de Montespan relating how, during a grand wedding at court, there was a muddle and her dogs’ cushions became mixed up with the hassocks. She reduced Mademoiselle to fits as she conjured up a picture of the bride and groom kneeling reverently on these canine accoutrements.
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Some people at court felt aggrieved that, in her determination to keep the King entertained, Athénaïs did not scruple to make fun of them. It seems she did not set out to cause trouble: the King’s German sister-in-law (who in other ways was highly critical of Mme de Montespan) affirmed that neither she nor her sister, Mme de Thianges, were at all malevolent. While acknowledging that ‘no one was sacred from their raillery on the pretext that it amused the King’, she stressed that there was nothing spiteful about this, for ‘when she had had her laugh at a person she was content and dropped the matter’. However, as Mme de Montespan herself admitted, there were times when she became so intoxicated by her own wit that she unintentionally caused offence. She ruefully admitted that in conversation, ‘One is often carried away to say things one does not really think … In this way one makes enemies of people to whom one wishes no harm.’
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Sensitive courtiers were conscious that they often became the butt of her mockery as they crossed the marble courtyard at Versailles (which was overlooked by her apartment) and they likened this to ‘going under fire’.