The Hurlyburly's Husband (11 page)

He suffered so greatly that he would fain have poisoned himself with the quicksilver in the mirror.

‘And I would do anything on earth to take my revenge.’

‘What shall you do, Louis-Henri?’

His reply was that of an oracle, of the sort that men are wont to make when first they love. ‘I will love you all my life.’

He went over to the fair woman and placed his palms on the green silk muslin of her shoulders, but she pushed his arms away.

‘I do not have the right to belong to another man, even my own husband! And you must dismiss the cook! Her arrogance and ill humour towards me are unbearable, and the very sight of her is unpleasant. She has a face like a rear end. She is quite deformed, and her head wobbles incessantly from the moment she sees me. You see the trouble the old hag causes. She—’

The marquis slapped his wife’s left cheek with the flat of his hand so violently that she would bear the mark on her white skin for at least three months.

At the Montausiers’
hôtel particulier
, all the women had adopted the
hurluberlu
. In addition to wearing ‘innocent’ gowns they bore, on their left cheek, a five-fingered mauve and blue mark like a star on their skin. Louis-Henri was dumbfounded. On seeing the loose muslin floating over the bellies of all these ladies of rank, he wondered whether the King had not impregnated them as well.

For weeks Louis-Henri had spent sleepless nights, and he had lost all semblance of a man who was happy in his marriage. His face was like that of a skinned cat, with bloodshot eyes. His periwig sat askew when he bolted like a fury into the first-floor gaming circle, spewing insults and outrage. He shouted that the King was a second David, a vile seducer and a thief. He raged and spouted every insolence imaginable against His Majesty. From the billiards to the trou-madame table, the courtiers were terrorised and, fearful of seeing their position at court compromised should they chance to hear the marquis’s imprecations, they fled.

There had been joy and abundance. They had been eating well and wagering high (’twas rolling in money there) – and then suddenly Montespan came and spoilt it all. He provoked a dreadful row. He condemned and castigated the attitude of a monarch who, for his own good pleasure, trampled all principles of family and of love! His tirades were tiresome and embarrassing; and when people were not yawning, they scoffed at this husband who had the poor taste to complain that the King had seduced his wife.

‘The conceited man doth protest, whilst the fool laments and tears his hair. The honourable man the King betrays goes hence; to speak he does not dare.’

But Montespan continued his vehement criticism, unwisely showering a thousand biblical curses upon the sovereign’s august head. One lady said to him, ‘You are mad, you must not continue with all your fairy tales.’ Blinded by rage, Montespan paid no attention to her warning. His eyes darted everywhere, he was looking for someone, and at last he saw the old duchesse Julie de Montausier.

Poised on a chair pierced with a hole above a pewter basin, the duchesse was defecating in public, whilst the nobles around her held a wind-passing contest they found wildly entertaining. The duchesse herself let out a few farts. Montespan swooped down upon her.

‘Give my Françoise back to me!’

‘Who is Françoise?’

‘My wife, whom I will never again call by any other name than that with which she was baptised. Athénaïs– ’tis too …Versailles. You took my wife from me to hand her to the King. Give her back! I love her.’

La Montausier was most astonished.

‘You were joined in holy matrimony four years ago and you still love your wife? If I may be so bold, your fishmonger feels the same penchant for his wife. But you, Monsieur, are a marquis. Do you believe that my husband loves me? Monsieur le duc,’ she asked, turning her head to the right, ‘do you love me?’

‘Of course not,’ replied her husband.

Montespan was flabbergasted.

‘And yet,’ he said to the duc, ‘were you not the finest wit of the time, did you not write
La Guirlande de Julie
? That unique collection of madrigals, composed for her name-day, a more delicate and enduring bouquet than any real flowers could make?’

‘’Tis true … each poem compared Julie to a different flower: a rose, a tulip … but above all it was the dowry of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet that I coveted.’

And she had gone on to become his wife; now she was not in the least offended, unlike Louis-Henri, who continued, ‘But when I saw the two of you, I thought that—’

‘If you judge by appearances in this place, Monsieur de Montespan, you will often be led astray. What appears to be is almost never what is
chez nous
.’

The Gascon stood there open-mouthed.

‘As for the King,’ continued the white-haired old woman, ‘if he deems it his duty to take your wife as his mistress – the most beautiful woman in France, the most desirable in the kingdom – and to flaunt her like a treasure, there is no cause for anger and for coming to bore us with some petty quarrel of the kind a German might make. You would do better to invoke Saint Leonard, the patron saint of childbirth, for the successful arrival of the bastard!’

Montespan could not believe his ears. He had been a captain of the light cavalry and had become so forgetful of good form that he addressed the duchesse in the language of the barracks. She would have another flower that she could add to her
Guirlande de Julie.

‘You are nothing but a flower of priggish pedantry and vileness, perfumed with lucre and servility, cultivated in a soil of hypocrisy!’

‘Oooooh!’

‘Rag-bag, harpy, hog’s tripe, old maggot-pie! Dislodge your buttocks from there and go and fetch me my wife or I’ll blow your backside to kingdom come!’

‘Oooooh!’

The duchesse began to tremble beneath the parasol held by the black slave. So shocked by the Gascon’s cruel words was the Princesse d’Harcourt that she defecated in her gown. Thick-lipped, with white hair, she often had an urge to shit and was prompt to find relief when on her feet, which drove all those she visited to despair. She moved off into the glow of the flames from the grand fireplace, where they flickered against the golden interior; she dirtied the parquet floor with a ghastly smear. Lauzun went up to Montespan, chuckled and told him, ‘One time, a count put a firecracker under her seat in a salon where she was playing piquet. Just as he was about to light it, being a charitable soul I advised him that the firecracker would maim her, and thereby I stayed his hand. Then there was an evening at Saint-Germain-en-Laye when the courtiers introduced twenty or more Swiss guards with drums into her chambers and roused her from her sleep. They assailed her with snowballs. She sat up, her hair all dishevelled, shouting at the top of her lungs and wriggling like an eel, not knowing where to hide. The nymph was afloat, and with water pouring from her bed, the room was awash. Enough to finish her off!’

Louis-Henri took his leave. In the street, a singer was bellowing a fashionable refrain.

‘’Tis said that fair Montespan

Hey nelly nelly, hey nelly

’Tis said that fair Montespan

Hides a round belly.’

On Rue des Rosiers, at the Hôtel Mortemart, the Gascon was greeted by Françoise’s moon-faced father. The marquis immediately asked his father-in-law what he thought of the disaster.

‘God be praised, good fortune has entered our house!’ he responded.

The son-in-law failed to understand. ‘What do you mean?’

The Duc de Mortemart with his big green protruding eyes and jovial little mouth explained.

‘I was three hundred thousand
livres
in debt, and the King paid them for me, simply because I am the father of his new mistress … He also offered me the title of governor of Paris and Île-de-France. And to compensate him for having appropriated his sister’s virtue, His Majesty appointed my son Vivonne (that imbecile) general of the galleys and vice-admiral of the Levant! Therefore you, the husband, can well imagine the glories you may hope for!’

‘I hope only for Françoise …’

‘Louis-Henri, you are a fool. Every favour, every honour is about to rain upon you, if you will only hold your tongue and close your eyes. But there you go, shouting out loud, even when you know you stand to suffer cruelly from what is arbitrary. That is why many will not forgive you. You disturb them by daring as you do to put a great king in a regrettable position.’

‘I place him in a regrettable position?’

‘You ought to be shut away in the Petites-Maisons like a madman. Cast off that grey hat. His Majesty despises grey hats and one must never displease His Majesty.’

Montespan was finding that the air here, too, was rotten. His father-in-law was getting carried away, flapping his lace. ‘Ah, why can you not be like the others! You would have made your existence a fine one, and died a marshal of France and governor of a good province, instead of trailing a pack of creditors in your wake.’

‘I am in love with your daughter…’

‘The Prince de Soubise was certainly more elegant than you are and yet he, too, in the beginning, baulked when Louis laid eyes upon his wife. He even attempted to make His Majesty believe that she was scrofulous: “She’s a fine apple, sire, but she is rotten within.” “Indeed?” replied the King. “I will see for myself by venturing therein.” Then the husband bowed his head and had the tact to stay out of sight for the duration of the liaison. In compensation he received a considerable sum of money and one of the finest houses in Paris. He transformed his horns of shame into horns of plenty.’

Gabriel de Rochechouart, Duc de Mortemart, poured himself a little cherry liqueur, and offered some to his son-in-law, who declined with a wave of his hand and a sigh.

‘Thus, there is only my uncle left – Henri Gondrin, the Archbishop of Sens – who might take my side … He shall condemn the King’s adultery from his very pulpit.’

‘His Majesty will soften him with a cardinal’s hat. Louis-Henri, to be a king’s cuckold is the chance of a lifetime. Do not let it go by, it will not come your way again.’

‘How can anyone think I shall remain silent and accept this?’

‘You are mad.’

‘Mad about Françoise.’

‘Ah, there he goes again! Such a fuss because the King likes to play the libertine with my daughter!’

Montespan restrained himself from doing violence to his father-in-law.

‘Louis-Henri, accept this state of affairs, else everyone will find you in poor taste. The King is vexed by the noisy, repeated demonstrations of a subject who is insolent enough to dare lay claim to his wife. You have become a figure of fun in Paris. ’Tis said Molière is writing a play about you.’

‘Oh, really?’

Amphitryon arrived on stage in front of his domain in Thebes, and stood next to a servant (Sosie) played by the author of the play; he was angry with Jupiter because he had just heard an unlikely story. He had discovered that whilst he had been away at war, the god (who rode astride an eagle, up there on his cloud) had cuckolded him by taking on his physical appearance in order to spend the night with his wife (Alcmene); from this union a child would be born:

JUPITER
:
To you a son shall be born who, under the name of Hercules
…

A married man rarely appreciates another man announcing to him that his wife is with child and that the name has been chosen without consulting him. It might have amused the spectators at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal but it clearly did not amuse Amphitryon, or Montespan, in the theatre.

Louis-Henri, standing among the crowd in the stalls, had paid fifteen
sols
for his ticket. The seats costing six
livres
were in the dress circle, the boxes, and on either side of the stage where the King, accompanied by Françoise, was attending the performance that 16 January 1668. The husband could not make out his rival’s features so grand were the King’s plumes, but from time to time he could just perceive, behind His Majesty, and depending on whether she leant forward or back on the seat, the blond curls on his wife’s neck, or sometimes her profile. Often the actors turned deferentially to the monarch. At other times, they shouted abuse at Montespan in the audience.

‘He may now console himself, for strokes from the wand of a god confer honour on him who has to submit to them.’

‘Upon my word, Monsieur God, I am your servant; I could have done without your attentions
…
’

All around the marquis the crowd were laughing. The aristocrats shoved him with their shoulders or their hips. And bit by bit they propelled him to the centre of the hall, directly under the enormous candelabra on the ceiling. This was the first time Louis-Henri had been to the theatre. He did not know that he was standing in the very spot one absolutely had to avoid in the stalls: beneath the light with its many candles that dripped profusely by the end of the performance. After a prologue and two acts, this was the third and final act. The wax was overflowing its little bowls, raining upon the marquis’s thick periwig, but he did not notice, so absorbed was he by the spectacle. He listened to the pleasing consolation to the betrayed husband on stage.