The Sun King (15 page)

Nobody knows when they were married; Mme de Maintenon burnt all the relevant documents after the King's death, saying she wished to remain an enigma to posterity; and the secret was well kept by the few witnesses of the ceremony, which must have taken place at Versailles in a little oratory in the King's apartment. It is thought that there were three people present, Père de La Chaise, the fascinating, wicked Monseigneur Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, who married them, and Bontemps, the King's body servant. Everything points to this wedding having been celebrated in the autumn of 1683, soon after the Court returned to Versailles from Fontainebleau. The Pope sent his blessing to the King and the relics of St Candida, done up in several different parcels, to Mme de Maintenon in August. Early in September she wrote to her dreadful brother (whom she loved but who was a proper thorn in her flesh) telling him on no account to join her at Fontainebleau. ‘The reason which prevents me from seeing you', she said, ‘is so valuable and so marvellous that it ought to bring you
nothing but joy.' As she could never write him an entirely agreeable letter, she had to finish with: ‘You are old [he was forty-nine], you have no children, you are unhealthy; what do you need but rest, liberty and piety?' Her young cousin, Mme de Caylus, who now lived with Mme de Maintenon, says she never saw her in such a nervous state as during that Fontainebleau visit. On 20 September she wrote to her confessor, Abbé Gobelin, to say that her agitation was over; she was looking forward to telling him of her new-found peace of mind and her happiness and meanwhile begged him to pray that she might put them to good account.

Their contemporaries never knew for certain that a marriage between the King and Mme de Maintenon had in fact taken place, though, for those who could read them, there were unmistakable indications that it must have. The King, whose custom it was to address his subjects by their name and title and who had hitherto called her ‘Marquise de Maintenon' now said ‘Madame' as he had done to the Queen. She sat in the little draught-proof box constructed for the Queen in the Chapel and took the head of the table at family dinner parties in the King's country houses, though not at Versailles where she dined alone. After her marriage she hardly ever left her own apartment to mingle with society, but when she did, she took her former rank which was mediocre; a long way behind the duchesses; the few people who were received in her room found themselves as though in the presence of the Queen. The same, slightly false, humility obtained in her way of dressing. Her unfashionable clothes were richly embroidered and her underclothes were luxurious. She prided herself on wearing no jewels; but the cross which dangled from a necklace of huge, perfectly matched, pearls, was made from the finest diamonds in the King's collection.

The King from now on half lived in her flat, where he spent all his leisure time, saw his children and worked with his ministers. Given his nature and the fact that he was known to have no mistress, it was most unlikely that he could have been for hours every day with a beautiful woman without making love to her. In fact there is proof that he did so; and more often than Mme de Maintenon would have wished. Unthinkable in that case that they should both go regularly to Holy Communion unless they were married. Madame for one knew quite well that they were: ‘In another world it will be decided whether she belongs to the King or to the paralytic Scarron; but when the King finds out the truth about her, there is no doubt he will return her to Scarron.' Madame said the King was so changed one would hardly know him. He no longer treated her as an intimate — not surprising in view of the libels and lies about his wife she was daily posting off to various foreign Courts.

Who was this Mme Scarron who took the centre of the stage at Versailles only fourteeen years after her début in a walking-on part? Françoise d'Aubigné's life had already been full of contradictions;
nobody would have thought that she was born under a lucky star — misfortune seemed to be her birthright. The d'Aubignés were an old, noble, provincial family; Mme de Maintenon's grandfather, Agrippa, an admirable person, was a friend of Henri IV and a Protestant; his son, her father, was a scamp, a rolling stone, in and out of prison for debt. When she was very small, d'Aubigné dragged her mother, her brother and her across the Atlantic to Martinique, and dying there, left them to struggle back to France as best they could. Then the mother died. Françoise, who had not a penny in the world, became a poor relation in the houses of various aunts and cousins. At the age of sixteen she was converted to Catholicism, not an easy process in the case of this serious, clever girl, intensely religious and versed in theology. Finally two doctors of divinity argued the question with each other, in front of her; their propositions seeming valid, she at last consented to turn. Fervent Roman Catholic as she became, she retained certain prejudices and practices from her Protestant youth; she never could get used to saying a rosary; never cared for the Virgin or mentioned the saints; always preferred Vespers to Mass. So she grew up, from hand to mouth, beautiful and clever but with the bleakest prospects that could be imagined. There seemed nothing for it but the convent, and against that she resolutely set her face. In spite of her piety, she loved the world. She went out in it, in Paris, and had many admirers but not a single suitor on account of her poverty. At last Scarron (always called the poet Scarron, though anything less poetic than himself and his works can hardly be imagined) proposed marriage. He had long been a feature of the literary world; was old (forty-two), paralysed, shaped like a Z and poor, but people flocked to his house because of his naughty wit.

Françoise d'Augibné would have snatched at any straw which rescued her from the nunnery; she accepted the poet's offer. She was a perfect wife to him and was spared what she was later to call ‘those painful moments', as Scarron was both impotent and helpless. She kept his house well; and there they entertained all that was most amusing, if not most edifying, in Paris society. The old fellow had a touching side, which other people felt, but she never did; she was never fond of him and always spoke in later years as if he had merely been a burden she was obliged to shoulder. Like her father and her brother, he was hopeless about money and no doubt she minded this; hers was an orderly soul. They were married for eight years; he died when she was twenty-five. The widow Scarron inherited nothing but debts; all the furniture of her husband's lodgings had to be sold to pay them, including her portrait by Mignard and
The Ecstasy of St Paul
by Poussin which had been painted specially for Paul Scarron. This picture, now in the Louvre, was before her eyes every day in later life; the Duc de Richelieu, who had bought it from her, had sold it to the King and it hung in one of the rooms of the Grand Appartement. Mme Scarron was only saved from actual starvation by Anne of Austria who gave her a tiny allowance on
which she struggled along, lodging in a convent, until Mme de Montespan opened new horizons for her.

Her brother was even more of a ne'er-do-well than her father had been. As soon as she was recognized as a powerful figure in the King's entourage, she set about finding an heiress for him. Many rich families would have liked the alliance for their daughters in return for various benefits she could have obtained for them through the King and her friend Louvois. But the wretched brother always made difficulties and finally, it really seemed in order to annoy her, he married a poor little doctor's daughter with no money, no brains and no connections. Mme de Maintenon was devoted to d'Aubigné; they laughed together; to her dying day she could never resist a joke. He did not like her nearly as much as she liked him. He hated the lectures which she thought it her duty to deliver when she saw or wrote to him; and although he accepted everything she did for him as a matter of course, he was for ever tormenting and teasing her.

It was d'Aubigné who put it about that she had had lovers while married to Scarron. He said she had once been found, dressed as a page, in bed with the Marquis de Villarceau. Now beautiful young women generally do have lovers, but in her case one may doubt it. Mme Scarron was careful of her reputation to an unattractive degree, saying over and over again that it mattered to her more than anything else: ‘Irreproachable behaviour is the cleverest policy' (
meilleure habileté
) was her motto. Whereas all the unchaste old beauties of her generation were tormented by fear of hellfire, there is never a word in the letters she wrote to her spiritual directors which suggests that she felt remorse for any sins of the flesh committed when she was young. Since that particular temptation is practically irresistible, the greatest proof of her virtue is that she seems not to have understood the language of love. Mlle de Fontanges once said, exasperated, that Mme Scarron had advised her to divest herself of her passion for the King, exactly as if it were a garment that could be put on or off at will. Ninon de L'Enclos, the famous courtesan, with whom she was most friendly, said she was too awkward for love. She had the gifts of a mother as opposed to those of a wife or mistress; she was perfect with children, though she generally lost interest in them when they grew up.

Mme de Maintenon's letters are not read as much as they deserve to be. At their best they are as witty as those of Mme de Sévigné. (She wrote to the Duc de Noailles one month of May: ‘The chapter of the green peas goes on. Looking forward to eating them, the pleasuré of having eaten them, and the joyful hope of soon eating more have been the sole topics of conversation the last four days. Certain ladies, having supped with the King find peas in their own rooms which they eat before going to bed.') Her letters provide the key to her curious nature. She was worldly and religious, both to an unusual degree. This combination, which is far from rare, needs to be fully understood if it is
not to look like hypocrisy. She herself truly thought that she hated the world. She never had words hard enough to condemn Versailles and the life at the Court, appearing to forget what a long, difficult and relentless struggle she had sustained in order to arrive at her great position there. She said, speaking of herself and Athénaïs, who made no bones about adoring the Court: ‘What does God do? He binds it to the one who hates it and sends away the one who loves it, for the salvation of both.' And again: ‘I am filled with sadness and horror at the very sight of Versailles. That is what is called the World; that is where all passions are at work: love of money, ambition, envy, dissipation. How happy are those who have put the World behind them!'

She was for ever telling her sister-in-law Mme d'Aubigné, hardly out of the nursery and naturally all agog for high life, that she was lucky to lead an anonymous existence, and be able to spend hours alone in her room, quietly reading. ‘I wouldn't place you here for anything. Love your husband and don't make new friends.'

There was another contradiction. From her outward appearance, sober, quiet, self-controlled and dignified, and the fact that the King used to call her ‘Your Solidity', it has often been assumed that she had a strong and reliable character. Nothing could be farther from the truth. She was easily influenced, a poor judge of human beings and, as will be seen, a far from loyal friend. She took people up with enthusiasm and dropped them again ruthlessly when it suited her to do so. She had an underlying melancholy, perhaps caused by the curious conflicts of her nature; and often said she wished she were dead. D'Aubigné once riposted to this ‘I hope you've made sure of marrying God the Father'.

Mme de Maintenon was tormented by migraines, as people sometimes are when they live with a dominating personality. Athénaïs, too, suffered from them, more than ever now. In December 1684 the King turned her out of her flat next to his and gave her the Appartement des Bains, with all its memories of happy days when first she lived at Versailles. Furious and miserable, she went down the Queen's staircase.

In 1685 the Dauphine had a third son, the Duc de Berri. ‘Ah my little Berri, I love you dearly, but you have killed me', she used to say. Indeed, she was never well again — Madame told her correspondents that Mme de Maintenon had made the doctors see to it that she never would be; which is the kind of wild statement in which Madame specialized. The Dauphine appeared less and less at the Court and shut herself up in a dark little back room, with her Italian maid, a prey to melancholia. The doctors said that her illness was imaginary, so she got scant sympathy from the King, who naturally wanted her to play her part in public. She used to say she would have to die in order to prove that she had not been shamming; and in 1690 she did die and it was proved. Her lungs were ulcerated, her stomach gangrened and there were several abscesses in her intestine. The Dauphin had loved her at first but she showed her indifference to him too plainly, in spite of friendly warnings from Mme de Maintenon. By the time she died he had made other dispositions. He fell in love first with one and then another of his wife's maids-of-honour. They were hastily married off, one to a Polignac, the other to a du Roure, and were never seen again at Versailles. Mme de Maintenon was certainly relieved by the death of this princess who was so disagreeable to her; the King hunted and gambled as if nothing had happened; and the only person who mourned her was Madame, who used to talk German to her and said that she had been somebody you could laugh with. She had a ready wit. One day the King's exquisite daughter Marie-Anne de Conti, seeing her asleep, said to one of the ladies-in-waiting that the Dauphine was as ugly as when she was awake. The Dauphine then woke up and observed that
she
had not the advantage of being a love child. Madame wept copiously at the funeral; and extra tears were jerked because the Palatinate and Bavarian coats of arms were practically the same, so that they reminded her of other deceased dear ones. But in later years she discovered that the Dauphine had repeated to the King various disagreeable jokes they had had together, about Mme de Maintenon. The three little boys were taken over by the King — the Dauphin never showed much interest in them. He called them by their full titles: ‘M. le Duc de Bourgogne' and so on, and they called him ‘Monseigneur'.