The Hurlyburly's Husband (23 page)

‘That’s enough, Madame Larivière,’ interrupted Montespan.

‘Oh, you’re right! And I’d rather go back to my kitchen than hear … And what are you doing here?’ she shouted at Dorothée (now twenty-one), as she bumped into her. ‘Are there no rooms to be cleaned? Why have you got hay in your hair? And why is your skirt inside out? Where have you been? You think we don’t have enough to do already in this house without a certain “slut”?’

The Englishman with the blond eyebrows was calm and elegant. He gently pressed a lace handkerchief to his forehead, throat and neck; his white skin was sensitive to the sun. Without animosity, Montespan suggested they go and sit somewhat further along, in the shadow of the gate. Dorothée came out with a jug of cool water from the well, and two glasses each containing a slice of Spanish lemon. She served them, then left again, removing a few more blades of straw from her poorly refastened bodice. The chancellor took short, refreshing sips of cool water whilst Louis-Henri held his glass in both hands, gazing dreamily at the thin slice of lemon floating in the water.

‘Is my wife happy?’

The visitor sat with his back to the lotus flowers rotting in the stagnant waters of the moat, and surveyed the tumbledown courtyard of this wretched, crumbling chateau. There, to the right, was the famous horned carriage, abandoned against the wall, next to an enormous wisteria. All dusty, with traces of bird droppings everywhere, the door hanging off its hinges, windows broken, the coach had become a hen house, and the fowl laid their eggs on the cracked leather seats. An arrogant little cockerel, perched on the stag’s antlers above the black vehicle, crowed in the dazzling summer heat.

‘In any event, she is very demanding,’ said the Englishman. ‘Some courtiers have begun to call her “Quanto”, because of the Italian card game,
quantova
, which means “how much”. Athénaïs wanted her own chateau in Clagny. She had the inhabitants expelled, the church demolished, the village razed and the cemetery moved, but when the King showed her his plans for the palace, she was so brazen as to remark scornfully that it was a residence fit for “an opera girl”. So now it is Mansart who is building her a little fairy-tale chateau. It will cost a quarter of the budget for the navy. At the court of Versailles, known as the “Gambling Den”, the King systematically pays all the debts that your spouse incurs. She burdens the treasury of the realm with tremendous expenses. Every evening she gets drunk, gambles, loses enormous amounts and throws her pearl necklaces onto the green baize, as many as seven in a week.’

The Gascon watched as a bee rose drunkenly in the air in the path of an awkward, fluttering butterfly.

‘So she’s not happy, it would seem.’

‘Marquis,’ said the chancellor, a note of finality in his voice, ‘His Majesty has ordered me to come to Guyenne to give you an excellent piece of news: “Inform Monsieur de Montespan that his marquisate shall be raised to a duchy-peerage, and that I will add the appropriate number of privileges, not wishing to depart from what is customary.”’

Louis-Henri, who was wearing a vast white shirt, loosened over a bare shoulder, was still staring at the glass between his long legs, spread wide in his worn boots. The Englishman, seeing that the squire had failed to react, feared he had not made himself understood and explained, ‘The King is not asking for anything in return for offering to make you a duke. The duchy of Bellegarde has just reverted to the crown.’

‘Is she ever known to sigh, as if she were regretting a past happiness … or perhaps even weep in private?’

‘Ah yes, she weeps exceedingly … since the widow Scarron was made Marquise de Maintenon. Your wife has been demanding to be made a duchesse, in order to be higher in rank than the governess of her royal children. You may appreciate how her pride is suffering; she is outraged by the fact that in public she must remain standing in the King’s presence, although she is the most important person at court. To have the right to a stool, one must be a duchesse, but Athénaïs cannot be a duchesse unless her husband is made a duc, whence the purpose of my visit…’

Montespan remained silent and put down his glass, then got up and went to sit again on the sunny part of the wall. Hyde walked along the moat to the marquis, who raised his head and declared, ‘I am sensitive, my lord, as is my duty, to the great honour you bestow upon me by your visit; however, allow me to find it strange that a man of your importance would agree to become embroiled in a negotiation of this nature. The King of France did not consult me when he wanted to make my wife his mistress; it is quite extraordinary that a prince of his rank should defer to my intervention to reward a behaviour that I condemned, and still condemn, and will condemn until my last mortal sigh. His Majesty has given eight or ten children to my spouse without a word to me; he may equally present her with a duchy without calling upon me for help. Let him make her a princess or even a highness if he so desires. He is all-powerful. I am but a reed; he is an oak. Madame de Montespan may still have ambitions but my own ambition was satisfied forty years ago. I was born a marquis, and I shall die a marquis, barring some unforeseen disaster…’

And Louis-Henri lay down on the little wall once again. His forearm over his eyes, he fell asleep. He did not even hear the hooves of the chancellor’s mount ringing on the cobbles as he rode away. The song of the cicadas resumed.

‘“What? How can that be!” she is said to have lost her temper when she saw Hyde. “He would deprive me of being a duchesse? Well, I will complete his ruin, I will strip him to the bone – that gooseherd, that vulgar little good-for-nothing arse-wipe!”’

‘But who was she talking about?’

‘About you, of course, Marquis.’

‘About me?’

Louis-Henri, climbing the stairway at Rue Taranne, could not believe what he had heard. That was what the love of his life said about him? Standing next to the Gascon, Monsieur and Madame Abraham winced, embarrassed and puzzled.

‘How that young woman has changed,’ sighed Constance.

‘The poor thing has completely lost all sense of reality at the Gambling Den,’ said the cuckold, trying to excuse her. ‘She warned me, Versailles is a dreadful place; there is not a single person whose head is not turned by it. The court changes even the best of souls.” I must get her out of that hell,’ he continued.

As he said this, a guard on the first-floor landing was listening and a bailiff was drawing up an inventory of the salon. Next to the bailiff a secretary wrote down, ‘One Rouen tapestry representing the story of Moses, eight folding chairs, two cabled chairs with horsehair stuffing, one Venetian mirror … thirty inches high, one little table …’

Once the man of law had added each piece of furniture to the list, the guards took it down to the street and loaded it onto a police cart. The bailiff recognised the marquis and introduced himself. ‘François Rhurin. And the kitchen is upstairs? May I?’ He went past Montespan and on the second floor began to dictate, ‘Iron spits and frying pans, stewpans and casseroles in tinned copper…’

Joseph Abraham, the wigmaker, looked truly sorrowful and turned to his tenant.

‘When they placed the seals and informed us of the day of the seizure, we wrote to you immediately. Oh, if only you had accepted the title His Majesty offered you ...’

‘I want nothing to do with a ducal crown for the purposes of my wife.’

‘… Larding-needles, rolling pins, a marble mortar with its pestle.’

The bailiff made his tally and climbed up to the room on the third floor. He was followed by the ageing Abraham couple, to whom Montespan – making no effort to conceal his gibes from spiteful ears – explained, ‘The King’s lawmen are attacking me in my weak spot: money. In Françoise’s name, they demand I reimburse her dowry, something I have never touched! I received only the interest. But by striking me so low, they leave themselves open to my scathing reply. The moment I arrived in Paris this morning, I went to see my father-in-law and, at the risk of provoking the total collapse of the house of Mortemart, I demanded immediate payment of the sixty thousand
écus
his daughter’s lawyers require. In the light of this attack, I hope the plaintiffs will curtail their fees and temper their unreasonable claims!’

‘One walnut bed, one blanket … Monsieur le marquis, I estimate the entirety of your property at a total of nine hundred and fifty
livres
, which shall be paid to your wife.’

‘Nine hundred and fifty
livres
,’ echoed Louis-Henri. ‘She has my furniture seized for nine hundred and fifty
livres
, when the King is building her a palace in Chinese mosaics for three million
écus
.’

He burst out laughing. ‘She has lost touch with reality.’

The bailiff informed him that Parliament would no doubt decide to do the same with the marquis’s remaining property in Guyenne, unless he paid the dowry forthwith, along with four thousand
livres
, annually, of alimony which the favourite demanded, by virtue of their physical separation.

‘How could I possibly do that? I haven’t a pistole to my name and I don’t even know where I shall sleep tonight.’

And if the squire found himself tossed out onto the cobblestones of Paris, in danger of losing even the last clod of earth on his Gascon estate, this did not seem to be Rhurin’s problem.

Montespan felt as if the Pyrenees had fallen on his wig. He reminded the bailiff, to no avail, that according to the law in force, whatsoever her reasons might be, a woman could not leave the conjugal home, on pain of being deprived of her rights and, if caught
in flagrante delicto
in an act of adultery, she could be sentenced to the iron collar, the pillory or banishment, forfeiting her dowry to her husband – provided he had not already murdered her, for there was no punishment prescribed in that case.

‘D-do you intend to kill the King’s mistress?’ stammered François Rhurin.

‘No, far from it…’

That very afternoon, at four thirty, surrounded by numerous mirrors, Louis XIV buttoned up his richly coloured brocade breeches again then wrote a letter.

Monsieur Colbert,

As I went through the council chamber of late I forgot to tell you that word has come to me again that Monsieur de Montespan is in Paris and has dared to make indiscreet assertions. It would be most opportune to observe his behaviour. He is a madman, capable of the most extravagant acts; it shall be your pleasure to keep me closely informed. In order that his pretexts for being in Paris should be short-lived, consult with Novion so that Parliament acts quickly. I know that Montespan has threatened to come and abduct his wife. As he is perfectly capable of it, once again I rely on you to ensure he does not appear in the environs of the palace, and that he leave Paris at the earliest opportunity.

Montespan moved through the grounds of the chateau of Versailles like a wolf through the forest in Bonnefont. He prowled amongst the lawns and flower beds; head down, he followed the pools of water – like mirrors that made the sky part of a
jardin à la française
. He hid side on behind the statues. He crouched in the thick clumps of narcissi, hyacinths, irises and fluffy anemones, and with long easy strides made his way towards the palace …

Versailles was a permanent construction site. Thirty-six thousand men were working there: stonecutters, masons, carpenters, roofers, earthmovers and labourers. They lodged at the edge of the immense royal estate in barracks known as ‘hôtels de Limoges’, as the majority of the stone workers were from Limousin and Creuse. In summer the work continued by torchlight. There were tents that served as infirmaries, and servants of the royal pantry sold the leftovers from court in stalls alongside the chateau. Montespan had, in broad daylight, taken advantage of the teeming activity to hide under the tarpaulin of a cart transporting the pineapples and green peas that the King was mad about, along with barrels of fruit ice cream. Once the cart had gone through a service gate in the outside wall, Louis-Henri had left the cart and hidden in the bushes.

Five thousand idle courtiers, hiding their smallpox beneath layers of rouge, met on the paths where they greeted or ignored one another loftily, and the Gascon scurried, head bent, towards the rear of the palace. He wanted to abduct Françoise – ‘I have to get her out of here’ – but it was impossible. He saw her in the distance, ten times more protected than the Queen. Forty bodyguards, for her alone, were by her side – officers who stared hawk-eyed into the distance whilst she walked up the steps of the royal residence; the cuckold followed.

A young sergeant was in charge of screening people at the entrance and asked the identity of those he did not recognise. ‘Who are you?’ Ahead of Louis-Henri, vexed ducs and princes offered all sorts of replies: ‘Julius Caesar!’ ‘The Pope!’ The guard was annoyed at having to deal with such jesting – not refined enough for his taste – but he forced himself to smile deferentially as he let them go through. When the Gascon introduced himself as ‘Monsieur de Montespan’, the sergeant burst out laughing.