The Sun King

by Nancy Mitford

  The hazards to human life in those days were childbirth for women, battle for men, babyhood and smallpox for everybody. Old age was not particularly dangerous or disagreeable; people lived to enormous ages and never seem to have become senile. Lauzun rode to hounds every day at eighty-nine. Mme de Ventadour danced a minuet at ninety. Mme de Maintenon, at over seventy, complained bitterly to her confessor that the King insisted on his conjugal rights every day and sometimes twice. She died at eighty-four, but only of boredom. Mme de Clérambault was the best of company at ninety. Le Nôtre was in perfect health at eighty-eight. Isaac Bartet, one of the King’s secretaries, died at a hundred and five, and the Spanish Marquis de Mansera at a hundred and seven, having practically lived on chocolate for years. Octogenarians abound in the pages of the memorialists, as lively as larks.

  Infant mortality was appalling; and the doctors were responsible. When a child was ailing, first they bled it, then purged it and then administered an emetic which generally did the trick. They never noticed that this treatment left anything to be desired, and though of course the mothers and nurses knew, they could do nothing, since pious public opinion would have accused them of murder had they refused to let the doctors have their way. As soon as the faculty was called in, the mothers were left to say their prayers, and find that consolation they could in the thought that their darlings would soon be with God. Ten of the seventeen children the King had with his wife and principal mistresses died in infancy — a perfectly normal percentage for a rich person. The poor, whose lives were in many ways so wretched, were at least spared the attentions of such as Fagon; had his methods prevailed in country districts the population of France would certainly not have been twenty millions.

  The surgeons did a better job than the physicians. They tied the patient to a board with linen bands and paid no attention to his screams; but they honestly tried to hurt as little as possible. The profession of surgery was inferior to that of medicine, the doctors liking to think that they were intellectuals while the saw-boneses were mere craftsmen. This attitude came from the Middle Ages when doctors were always priests who were forbidden to shed blood; when people had to be cut up or bled, it was done by the barbers. The status of surgeon was raised in the seventeenth century. Félix, the Court surgeon, and his successor Mareschal de Bièvre were remarkable men; the King was fond of them, they became influential figures at the school of medicine in Paris. Both achieved some spectacular cures, notably of the stone, a disease which was prevalent at that time and many of whose victims were little boys under ten years old. The operation for it as performed by them was horrible enough (Bossuet preferred to die in agony sooner than submit to it) but there was a fashionable quack in Paris, called Frère Jacques, who inflicted worse tortures than they did. Martin Lister, visiting Paris, went to watch him operate and was appalled by what he saw. Nearly all his patients died, but that did not prevent high society from flocking to him. Finally he killed Maréchal de Lorges in circumstances of such horrifying butchery that the number of his patients fell off and he was ruined. Félix and Mareschal lost far fewer patients than most surgeons of the day — possibly their instruments were cleaner.

  The King’s first doctor was M. de L’Orme (1584–1678) who had attended Louis XIII and was the fashionable doctor for fifty years. De L’Orme swore by hygiene and applied his theories to himself, with the result that he lived to be ninety-four. ‘Why do fish live to such a great age? Because’, said he, ‘they are never subjected to draughts.’ So he spent his days in a sedan chair draped with blankets and lined with hares’ fur to ensure that no air could percolate. When obliged to go out, he covered himself with a morocco robe and mask and wore six pairs of stockings and several fur hats. He always kept a bit of garlic in his mouth, incense in his ears and a stalk of rue sticking out of each nostril. He slept in a sort of brick oven, surrounded by hot water bottles, and lived on sheep’s tongues and syrup of greengages — he never touched vegetables, raw fruit, jam or pastry. At eighty-seven he married a young wife and wore her out; she died within the year. M. de L’Orme discovered the excellent properties of the waters at Bourbon, which he made into a fashionable spa.

  Louis XIV’s most famous doctor was Guy-Crescent Fagon who managed, in the course of about twenty years, to see most of the royal family into their graves. He is first heard of looking after Mme de Maintenon’s little charges when they lived in the rue de Vaugirard and he owed his career to her. She obtained the post of Doctor to the Queen for him. He killed Marie-Thérèse almost at once, but stayed on at Versailles; on All Souls’ Day (le jour des morts) 1693 he was named Premier Médecin du Roi, one of the important offices of the Court. The First Doctor had a flat in the château, a house in the town of Versailles, and a huge income; he was a member of the Conseil and was ennobled. He had every interest in keeping his master alive since his was the only appointment that automatically ended with the King’s death. Fagon’s fame extended all over Europe. William III, when he was dying, sent him an account of his symptoms, pretending to be a simple parish priest, and asked for an opinion. Fagon sent word that he had better make his peace with God, since he had not long to live — after which William resigned himself and died. Many of his contemporaries described Fagon as a good, honest man. He had charm, wit, an excellent bedside manner, knowledge of the world and of all the subjects to do with his profession such as botany and chemistry. If he liked somebody he could be very kind — as he always was, for example, with Mary of Modena. But he was hated by some, notably by Madame, who roundly accused him of murdering his patients. There was no love lost between them and Fagon certainly did not cover himself with glory when he pretended that her son had poisoned practically all the King’s heirs. Fagon was ugly, even frightening to look at, with long thin legs like a bird, a shock of black hair, rotten teeth and hanging lips. He suffered from asthma, and never went to bed but always slept in a chair.

  The King had excellent health. Like almost everybody he suffered from his teeth; part of his upper jaw-bone had been removed while one of them was being torn out so that he had difficulty in masticating his food, bits of which sometimes came down his nose. He took medicine regularly once a month, a tremendous purge which worked six or seven times. On these days he never left his room. He had gout. But he was not regarded as liable to real illness. So it came as a great shock to the courtiers, on the morning of 18 November 1686, to learn that the King had undergone a severe operation at seven a.m. Unbeknown to the public he had been suffering for many months from an anal fistula (which probably accounted for his notable bad temper during the past year or so) and at last he had decided that the surgeons must see what they could do for him. This disease had hitherto baffled them; and Cardinal de Richelieu had died of the treatment they gave him for it. Félix, the King’s surgeon at this time, got hold of several poor men suffering from the complaint and sent them to take the waters at Barèges which were said to cure it. When none were cured he began operating on fistulas in all the Paris hospitals; he perfected an instrument which was supposed to lessen the pain.

  Nobody knew that the King was to undergo the operation except Mme de Maintenon, Louvois, Père de La Chaise and the doctors — they kept the secret for six weeks. The King endured it heroically. If he was hard on other people he was not indulgent to himself; his control was extraordinary. He had been in particularly good spirits the day before, walking round the gardens at Versailles and inspecting the Reservoir. On the operating table he was cut eight times with scissors and twice with lancet — not only did he make no sound or movement but his breathing never altered its rhythm. The news was only released when all was over. A messenger was sent to find the Dauphin who was, of course, out hunting. He galloped home hell-for-leather, in tears, and rushed distractedly to his father’s room, too much upset to speak. At Paris, the churches were filled in a quarter of an hour after the news arrived. Although the King never went there and was not exactly popular, the Parisians were proud of him. They told each other that w
hatever might be thought of Louis XIV, he had raised the name of France above all other nations.

  The Grand Condé and Mme de Montespan were at Fontainebleau nursing Mme la Duchesse who was recovering from her smallpox; a messenger was sent, telling them on no account to come to Versailles. The story that Athénaïs stormed into the King’s bedroom only to find Mme de Maintenon quietly sewing by his bed, that she stormed out again and had hysterics in her own room, is quite untrue. Condé obeyed the King’s injunction not to come, because he did not want to bring infection to Versailles and also because he felt unwell. He sent his son and his beloved nephew Conti, begging the King to see him. The King said drily that he was not forbidden the Court; he spoke to him quite amiably.

  Although Félix begged the King to rest, he insisted on holding a council that very evening, in such agony that the sweat was pouring down his face. The next day he received the ambassadors, as he wanted them to take note that he was not dying; the pain altered his face so that he was unrecognizable. As the days went on he seemed to make a remarkable recovery, singing to himself and suffering from gout, considered to be a good sign. He had to live on soup and felt very hungry. People in the château began talking of other things; such as the Grand Condé, who seemed far from well; but the topic of the day was that the Dauphin had cut off his hair, saying that it was a bore out hunting. Hitherto he had worn his own beautiful, long, golden curls; from now on he had a wig which was not nearly so pretty.

  The King’s state became less satisfactory, and on 6 December, Félix thought it necessary to give him a few more jabs to prevent the wound from healing unevenly. On the 8th it was not in a very good state and he cut it again. On the 10th there was another long, serious operation during which, Mme de Maintenon said, the King suffered for six hours as much as if he had been broken on the wheel. It was infinitely more terrible than the first. But the very next day he was much better, though distressed by the news that Condé had died. For the next week or so he suffered a great deal of pain; after that he made a complete recovery.

  13. SAINT-CYR, THE SCHOOL

  Jeunes et tendres fleurs, pars le sort agitées,

  Sous un ciel étranger comme moi transplantées,

  Dans un lieu séparé de profanes têmoins,

  Je mets à les former étude et mes soins.

  RACINE

  Some years before her marriage to Louis XIV, Mme de Maintenon, with a great friend of hers, Mme de Brinon, had started a tiny school for girls. Having had such a difficult youth herself, she always felt sorry for the children of hobereaux — the minor provincial nobility to which she belonged. With the peasants, they were the worst sufferers from the King’s wars. Fénelon said a well-born youth of twenty who had not already served in several campaigns was hardly to be found in the whole of France. Recruiting was supposed to be voluntary, and of course many young men went off filled with the spirit of adventure and the love of battle, but there was not much choice; the nobles were allowed no profession except the army or the Church; the peasants were bribed away from their fields with specious words; if these did not lure them, they were subjected to a sort of press-gang. Townsfolk, richer and more resourceful, could often get out of serving if they wanted to. The hobereaux could not hope for much advancement; the higher commands all went to the King’s friends at Versailles; and the prospects of ‘a man I never see’ were dim. Towards the end of the reign, when the great captains were dead and their successors incompetent, somebody suggested to the King that there might be better soldiers for him to choose from in the provinces. ‘Very possibly’ he replied ‘but how am I to find them? It would mean taking other people’s protégés — I’d rather have the men I know.’

  The daughters of country gentlemen had very miserable lives. They were uneducated for the most part. Those who did not marry often became the servants of their sisters-in-law, or went, without a vocation, into nunneries. Mme de Maintenon thought it would be a good work to rescue some of them from a fate she had so narrowly escaped herself.

  Mme de Brinon was a woman of character and intelligence, an Ursuline nun whose convent had been obliged to shut for lack of funds. Her school began at Rueil. Mme de Maintenon interested the King in it; they decided to enlarge it and bring it to the neighbourhood of Versailles where Mme de Maintenon could keep an eye on it. At the bottom of the park there was a little hamlet called Saint-Cyr, clustering round an ancient convent of Benedictines. The King sent for the Mother Superior and asked whether she and her nuns would not like to move to Paris. But she respectfully begged that they might be allowed to stay where Good King Dagobert had placed them. The King told Mme de Maintenon that he could dislodge them with a lettre de cachet, but she thought that would be an unfortunate beginning for her scheme. So new premises had to be built and Mansart got to work, with the assistance of the army, which in times of peace, always provided builders for the King. Mme de Maintenon told him to design her a large plain house like a barracks; neither luxury nor beauty were required. She herself saw to every detail of the interior decoration and plain but pretty furnishings — the linen she bought was of such excellent quality that it lasted fifty years. There was room for two hundred and fifty girls between the ages of six and nineteen; thirty-six lady professors (known as the Dames) of the same social category as the girls and very little older than they were, and twenty-four lay sisters. The Dames were to be called Madame and their surname.

  The whole point of the scheme was that Saint-Cyr should not be a convent. Mme de Maintenon had married the Z-shaped Scarron sooner than enter one; and the King was against religious establishments, especially for women who, he thought, became dour and stultified in them. His wish was to improve the education of the women-folk of his race guerrière, not to shut them up and condemn them to sterility. Père de La Chaise agreed, saying there were plenty of good nuns in the world and not enough good mothers. So it was arranged that the Dames and the sisters would take simple, not perpetual, vows; the girls were to be brought up with a view to living in the world; and the whole atmosphere was to be one of civilized piety. Saint-Cyr would provide a good general education. The young ladies must converse and write in excellent French, giving the proper value to each word and constructing solid phrases. They would learn poetry by heart and do a great deal of decorative needlework. (One of their first achievements was an altar cloth for the cathedral at Strasbourg, a recent French conquest.) The girls and the Dames were to be on friendly terms with each other and the lessons must be given in an easy, smiling, natural way; there was to be no strict and painful holiness, and no unnecessary rules.

  The constitution of Saint-Cyr was drawn up by Mme de Maintenon, Mme de Brinon and the King, approved by Père de La Chaise and Mme de Maintenon’s confessor; the language was corrected by Racine and Boileau, and the final document sent to the Pope. Innocent XI was asked to approve a transfer of funds from the rich Abbey of Saint-Denis, but, on bad terms with the King, he most unsportingly made difficulties which were only resolved after his death. Mme de Brinon was to be Superior for life and Mme de Maintenon to enjoy pre-eminence, honours, prerogatives and entire authority. She was also to have a flat for herself and her household (kept up at the expense of the school) which she could occupy whenever she pleased. Indeed many of the courtiers thought her main object in founding this institution was to get away from all the fresh air at Versailles. Whenever the King went to her room the first thing he did was to fling open the windows, only allowing them to be shut when he left. Mme de Maintenon sat shivering in a tonneau or hooded chair, covered with rugs and shawls, but he never took the hint. At Saint-Cyr she used to get into a warm bed on arrival and often stayed there all day.

  The girls were chosen by the King, after d’Hozier, his genealogist, had looked at their pedigrees (four degrees of nobility on the father’s side were required). The list of their names and birthplaces makes amusing reading for anybody who knows France. They were never allowed to forget that they were the daughters of warriors. The King a
nd his generals used to go and worship the God of Battles among these innocent souls before leaving for the front. The girls were told to pray, not for victory but for peace, which in those days of French supremacy came to the same thing.

  The King took a great interest in the uniform, saying that it must be unlike that of nuns, with plenty of white muslin and ribbons. Mme de Maintenon’s maid put on various models, to show him. A lightly woven brown woollen stuff was chosen, to be lined with fur in winter and striped cotton in summer. An apron to match was edged with ribbon showing to which form the wearer belonged. The girls were enjoined to care for their looks since beauty is a gift from God, and told to do their hair well, indeed fashionably, and cover it with a prettier version of a nun’s veil. The Dames had the same dress with no apron. They wore a gold cross, inscribed with words by Racine:

  Elle est notre guide fidèle,

  Notre félicité vient d’elle.

  One was not quite sure whether elle referred to the cross or Mme de Maintenon.

  The house was ready in 1686; the women were brought there in royal coaches, preceded by the relics of St Candida. Crowds from Versailles and the neighbourhood lined the road to see them go by; Mme de Maintenon was at the door, to greet them with the words: ‘These walls are my retreat and my tomb; may this establishment live as long as France, and France as long as the world!’ One of the first visitors was Athénaïs de Montespan, bringing her youngest daughter, Mlle de Blois, aged ten. Then all the princes and princesses came and by degrees most of the courtiers. Saint-Cyr was a nine days’ wonder.

  As this was the time of the King’s operation he only came himself a few weeks later. He was greeted by three hundred fresh young voices chanting an anthem with words by Mme de Brinon and music by Lully:

  Grand Dieu sauvez le roi