The Hurlyburly's Husband (18 page)

Crystals of ice distorted the view from the windowpanes of his second-floor chamber. A thin veil of mist was drifting over the whitened fields in the valley. Curls of smoke rose above the farms. In the distance lay the high chain of the Pyrenees. Madame Larivière scratched at the door then came in with a kettle of steaming water. Trails of vapour streamed from the kettle’s spout and the cook’s nostrils, as if she were fuming within.

‘Is there something wrong, Madame Larivière?’ asked the marquis.

‘I slept poorly. An emissary from the King has just arrived and has asked to speak to you. He is waiting in the middle of the courtyard, observing the chateau.’

‘Have him come up and wait in the reception hall while I perform my ablutions.’

‘You would make him wait, would rather wash than scrub yourself with a dry towel, when ’tis known the doctors are wary of water? ’Tis a carrier of all manner of disease, it dilates the pores, and enters the body to corrupt and weaken it!’

In his long underbreeches, the marquis removed his shirt and felt the skin on his arms and torso.

‘If I were to be contaminated, it would have happened already long ago …’

‘As for the King, he has only washed once in his life. Every morning, the first valet places a few drops of spirits of wine on His Majesty’s hands. His lord chamberlain brings the font: Louis makes the sign of the cross, he is cleansed. Next thing, you’ll be bathing in the sea, a folly for madmen and maniacs!’

The cook slammed the door behind her. The marquis smiled.

Washed, and dressed in mourning, Montespan applied his perfume and went through another door that led to the reception hall where the emissary was waiting.

He was a proud cavalryman. He had long, curly hair and a thin moustache, and wore embroidery and lace under a heavy vermilion cloak. He smelt of his horse and of the urine and sweat of someone who had galloped for long hours. He looked the clean marquis up and down.

‘The court is tired, Monsieur, of all this black you wear.’

And without being invited, the emissary went to sit in Louis-Henri’s armchair and stretched out his red heels towards the edge of the hearth, where the cook had lit a fire.

‘Marquis, your uncle, the Archbishop of Sens, is at great risk of incurring royal wrath for having taken your side. In his diocese, he has denounced His Majesty’s adultery with a married woman, and has published the ancient canons branding it a violation of religious law. The King has threatened him with a
Zettre de cachet
but the prelate responded with another threat: excommunication. He wants to force the Pope to issue a public reprimand to the King of France. It is becoming an affair of state.’

The emissary’s tone was as icy as the season. He got up and walked from one side of the hall to the other.

‘In the event that a man who has received the nine unctions of oil from the holy phial should be reduced to the sorry rank of the debauched, it will cause a most fearful uproar, one that will resound with horror throughout all nations. The King has sent me to obtain your consent to the
fait accompli
, and your agreement to cease this public commotion. How much do you want?’

When one is near a burning fire, but moves away from it, to go to the far end of the room, one is seized by the chill. The emissary came back to the fireplace, where Montespan, leaning on his elbows, opened a page at random in a book by Tacitus and found, ‘In Rome, everything was running to servility.’

‘Colbert,’ said the emissary, ‘who is supposed to find the time to worry about the state of your soul, whilst seeing to problems as trivial as the government and the economy of France, has suggested in the name of His Majesty that a hundred thousand
écus
might do. I did say
écus
, I did not say
louis
, it’s thrice the amount.’

The man was haughty and full of scorn. While Louis-Henri examined the mantelpiece above the fire, the envoy from Versailles added, ‘As well as assuming all your debts, naturally, and that does amount, after all, to—’

‘How is my wife?’

‘The King’s favourite has begun her fairy-tale career; she is, indisputably, queen of France. She has driven La Vallière to the Carmelites and has demanded she be harangued wherever she goes. Her apartments consist of twenty rooms on the first floor immediately beyond the King’s council chamber, whereas the Queen has only eleven rooms on the second floor. She graciously adorns every festivity at court. Her train is carried by a peer of France, whereas the Queen has only a page to carry hers. The King is proud of his conquest, and takes pleasure in having others admire her, the way foreign dignitaries passing through Versailles might admire the buildings and gardens. She is cheerful and gay, and makes pleasantries with the finest of wit. She seems to adopt anything amusing. She is at ease with everyone, and has a gift for putting everyone in their place. At court they are saying that there will not be a war because His Majesty cannot be parted from la Montespan … One of Athénaïs’s chambermaids said of the King, “He desires her thrice a day, ’tis like a huge raging hunger. And so impatient is he, he won’t hesitate to tumble her in plain sight of the servants. But this hardly bothers the marquise, she gladly overlooks the minor inconveniences such ardour might cause.” The Sun King’s libido, in your wife’s presence, has turned out to be as exceptional as his patience with regard to you might prove limited. Two hundred thousand
écus
!’

Montespan could hear the crowing of the cockerels outside, along with a blacksmith’s first hammering, and the creaking of cartwheels bringing barrels of wine, hay for the horses, and stone for construction. The marquis went over to a stained-glass window whilst the emissary continued, ‘One day, your wife accompanied His Majesty to review his German mercenaries. When she went by, they shouted,
“Königs Hure! Hure!”
(The King’s whore! The whore!) “What are they saying?” she asked. When, later on, the monarch wanted to know how she had found the review, she replied, “Perfectly lovely, although I do find the Germans rather too naïve, calling things by their name.” Terribly amusing, don’t you agree? You can well understand that Louis wants to keep la Montespan by his side, all the more so now that she has begun to wear her “innocent” gowns again.’

The cuckold turned round. ‘I am to be a father yet again?’

‘She is right to feel her power enhanced by a new pregnancy. But this time, exceptional safety precautions shall be taken. The bastard, along with its brothers and sisters, no doubt still to come, will be lodged, that much I can tell you, in a lovely house on Rue Vaugirard with a large garden surrounded by high walls where the children can play, shielded from external view and protected by guards. To raise her progeny, the favourite has seen fit to entrust her children to the ugly widow of a paralytic scribbler, who was much weakened by rheumatism, a virtual gnome by the name of Paul Scarron. Upon his death, the lecherous hunchbacked poet left a will: “I leave my property to my wife on condition she marry again. Thus one man at least shall regret my passing!” Your wife has introduced the royal bastards’ governess to His Majesty.’

Montespan lifted his head to the ceiling, stared at it at length and scratched his neck. The stinking horseman went over to him, and ran a finger over the saltpetre in the wall.

‘Your wife’s children will be better lodged than you are. Your chateau is full of cracks, the stones are coming loose, it is falling into ruin. You need to repair a step that the frost has split. One might presume – at best – that this is the home of a priest! Your situation is far from easeful, all you own is debts. You have been ostracised from the lansquenet tables in Paris, and whilst they may have been your wicked stepmothers, they were also your wet nurses. What are you going to live off, since your income amounts to no more than four hundred
livres
a year? You also owe a small fortune to a labourer who is going to take part of your land from you. Your disgrace in exile is a social death sentence. You are at the bottom of the ladder of nobility and your wife’s merit would serve more to elevate you than anything that you might be able to achieve. If you would agree to remain silent and bow to the royal will rather than coming to this province to languish in your bitterness, you would own an
hôtel particulier
in the centre of Paris with thirty servants, as well as hundreds of hectares of land, from which you would receive your seignorial dues, and forests, and hunting grounds!’

Montespan let the emissary continue to rattle on in this meaningless way and went to sit down on a folding chair of iron and canvas. He listened to the wind whistling through the foothills of the Pyrenees, like a Sardana dance, and heard the amount the emissary from Versailles was now offering.

‘Three hundred thousand
écus
! That means nine hundred thousand
livres
, almost one million. It is yours for the asking. What do you reply?’

Louis-Henri looked at the icicles hanging from the roof, then at the emissary.

‘I do not know what is keeping me from throwing you out of the window.’

‘I can’t stand having to pay for everything with coins stamped with the head of my wife’s lover! Particularly as he is hideous, the filthy dwarf! What on earth does she see in him?’

Louis-Henri picked up a silver
écu
and began to detail the defects of the engraved figure. ‘His nose is hooked and over-long, he has a thick neck, his cheeks are flabby. His breastplate with that Roman draping is ridiculous. I don’t like his wig at all! ’Tis said his charm is …
exotic.
Well, I can’t see it myself.’

The marquis bit the coin and tossed it to the steward.

‘Catch it, Cartet, and tell the carpenter to make a wooden crate.’

‘Another coffin? What shall we bury this time, your hope?’

‘No, it shall be for the painting. Don’t forget to measure it.’

While the steward was on his way out, a voice with a Montlhéry accent could be heard.

‘The pose, Monsieur de Montespan.’

The itinerant painter, who travelled the length and breadth of France, going from chateau to chateau to offer his talents as a portrait painter and decorator (friezes for walls and above doors, illustrated ceilings) to the petty nobility, adjusted his model’s pose.

‘Turn more to the right, with your head looking straight towards me; there, that’s it. Now don’t move.’

Louis-Henri was sitting at his desk in the study on the first floor of the chateau, a freshly cut crow’s quill between his fingers, pretending to write on an immaculate sheet of paper. Bareheaded, wearing an off-white hemp shirt, he had not wanted to cover his scalp with a wig, or to wear any of the ribbons, feathers, lace or artificial flowers with which a marquis posing for posterity generally adorned himself. The cuckold had wanted something intimate, and he contemplated the artist as if he were looking lovingly at his wife.

The painter from Montlhéry sat on a stool with his legs apart and sometimes leant forward to examine his model, accentuating in silence the curve of an eyelid heavy with sadness, or enhancing the shadow of a faint smile on his lips.

‘Your mouth and your eyes often contradict each other,’ said the portrait painter. ‘When your pupils sparkle with mischief, your mouth droops in sorrow, and when your lips are upturned and jesting, your eyes grow misty with tears.’

The marquis said nothing and began to write.

23 June 1669

Françoise,

The window was open. The cicadas were singing. There was a whooshing sound as the scythes sliced through the stalks of grain. Louis-Henri looked up at the painter for a moment, then dipped his nib into the inkwell, into the black liquid made of vitriol and oak-gall.

Here is my portrait painted by Jean Sabatel that you shall put in your bedchamber when the King is no longer there. Let it remind you of me, and of the excessive tenderness I feel for you, and how many ways I liked to demonstrate that, on every occasion. Place my portrait therefore in the light, and look now and again upon a husband who adores you: a poor spouse who, because his wife has been taken from him, no longer knows what he does. I have become as accepting of ruin as they tell me you are now accepting of the bad air of a palace built on quicksand and degradation; there are people for whom I no longer fear ruin –you!

The marquis’s pen hurried over the page, scratching heavily on the paper.

My fair bird, my turtledove, with your neck adorned with pearls you are inside a gilded cage two hundred leagues from where I languish in forced exile. I could not like any place where you are not. Is it not possible, my goddess, for you to fly away and join me? Or might you not know the love that your beautiful eyes, my sunlight, have truly aroused in my heart? ’Tis more than rage that I feel in my soul, knowing that you have been stolen by another who does not love you as I do. If you do not blush, my lady, I blush for you. But I swear to you on your person, which is what I hold dearest on earth, that
…

The door to the study opened. Montespan looked round. The painter lifted his brush from the canvas. It was Dorothée, who had come to look for the doll with the
hurluberlu
that Marie-Christine, who was standing behind her, had left there. The child, who shared the marquis’s sad fate, clung to the servant’s skirts. Dorothée was her only playmate: she was sixteen now and she looked like a woman. As for Marie-Christine, her cheeks were hollow, making her nose appear large. She was withering like a flower deprived of water. Now she came up to Louis-Henri and asked, ‘To whom are you writing, Father?’ The marquis smiled, but his eyes were creased with sadness. Tall, big-boned, muscular, infinitely polite, he enquired of his daughter if she had slept well the previous night. The child replied that henceforth she would like to sleep with Dorothée.