The Sun King

by Nancy Mitford

  Everything at Saint-Cyr appeared to be in order, but another storm was brewing. By far the most attractive of the Dames was Elise de La Maisonfort, described by Mme de Maintenon as devout, absent-minded, adorably giddy and brilliantly intelligent. She had brought a little sister to be a pupil; Mme de Maintenon talked to Elise, thought her charming and made her stay herself, as a Dame. She had come to Paris from her native Berry, hoping to obtain the post of lady-in-waiting to one of the princesses. Soon she was Mme de Maintenon’s particular protégée; the King, too, had a great fancy for her, sought her company, and gave her a small estate and an income for life. Most of the girls were in love with her. ‘It is my destiny to be loved’, she used to say. But she had no religious vocation and had taken simple vows with the greatest reluctance. She suffered from doubts, which she could only overcome in moments of religious ecstasy; worse still, she loved (or thought she loved, for she had never sampled it) the World. She had a horror of being bored. She was the recipient of Mme de Maintenon’s famous letter:

  How can I make you realize the boredom which devours the great of this world and the trouble they have in occupying their time? Can’t you see that I am dying of grief in spite of my incredible destiny? And that only the love of God keeps me from going under? I was once young and pretty; I tasted the pleasures of this life and everybody loved me. Later on I lived for years in a brilliant society; then I came into favour. I swear to you, my dear daughter, that all these conditions produce a fearful emptiness, an anxiety, a lassitude, a longing for a different existence because all are unsatisfactory. One is only at rest with God. . .

  Mme de La Maisonfort was not convinced. At the age of twenty-three she no doubt thought it would be quite all right to be at rest with God when she was an old lady like Mme de Maintenon, meanwhile she had a passionate desires for the pleasures of this life. Mme de Maintenon, the Bishop of Chartres and Fénelon had the greatest trouble in persuading her to take perpetual vows. Finally they almost dragged her to the altar (1692). Mme de Maintenon was delighted with this outcome because she planned eventually to make Mme de La Maisonfort the superior of Saint-Cyr; she told her how lucky she was to belong only to herself and thus to be able to offer herself up as a sacrifice. Fénelon preached a moving sermon on the joys of monasticism. But the new nun seemed more dead than alive.

  Now Mme de La Maisonfort had a cousin called Mme Guyon (who was also, oddly enough, related to Fénelon and the d’Arnaulds of Port-Royal). This widow was entirely given over to piety and when she heard of Mme de La Maisonfort’s doubts she went to Saint-Cyr to try and help her resolve them. Mme de La Maisonfort, with her craving for religious stimulus, fell an easy victim to Quietism, the brand of poetic mysticism which Mme Guyon preached. The pure love of God, according to her, should be influenced neither by fear of hell nor by hope of heaven: deeds were nothing; love alone ought to count. Mary was a hundred times better than Martha.

  As Mme Guyon’s doctrine gained more and more hold over her imagination, Mme de La Maisonfort could not imagine why she had ever hesitated to take the veil; not only she but most of the other Dames became as radiantly happy as they had hitherto been discontented. Mme de Maintenon, too, fell under Mme Guyon’s undoubted charm; she was grateful to her for what she had done at Saint-Cyr, which now seemed ready to fulfil all hopes. She singled out Mme Guyon for favours including a room of her own in the convent. A little set was soon formed there led by Mesdames Guyon and de La Maisonfort. Those few Dames who were not admitted to it felt left out in the cold; but they comforted themselves by mocking both Mme Guyon’s doctrine and her neckline — which seemed low for such a saintly person. Her followers gave themselves airs and had all sorts of affectations, for instance they never went to hear sermons which, they said, interrupted their thoughts of God. Mme de Maintenon, so incredulous of earthly love, approved; one must and should love God without reserve. All the same, Mme Guyon had the good sense not to speak to her, as she did to the Dames, of visions and ecstasies; she felt that such dangerous subjects might not be very well received. At Versailles, and at the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, she was constantly with the ‘holy flock’, as the courtiers called the Beauvilliers, Chevreuses and Mme de Maintenon; and it was with them that she met Fénelon. In the words of Saint-Simon: ‘leur sublime s’amalgama’. Mme Guyon said: ‘It seemed that Our Lord united me to him very intimately, more than to anyone else’ — Fénelon himself said ‘I am closely united to you beyond all that I can say or understand’. Fénelon, who had cleverly noticed that human beings love themselves to the point of idolatry, was always looking for means of transferring this love to God; there was much in Mme Guyon’s doctrine that appealed to him.

  Mme Guyon seems to have been truly dreadful, but opinions have been divided on her ever since she caused the breach between Fénelon and Bossuet. In our own century, Monsignor Knox was against her, and Abbé Brémond for. She was one of those excessive creatures, totally without sense of humour, who make an easy target for irreverent spirits. Writing of her mystical experiences, she described herself as a sort of reservoir through which grace flowed into the friends sitting round her — she became so filled with it that sometimes she had to ask one of the duchesses to undo her stays. She liked to roll in nettles, suck the wounds of poor people and so on. Having married Jesus Christ in one of her ecstasies she ceased to bother about the saints; the mistress does not ask favours of the employees. The effect that she had on many of her most respectable contemporaries was such that idle mockery is out of place; though one may feel thankful never to have met anybody like her. It seems strange that all these people so much interested in theology did not realize at once that her doctrine was doubtful if not heretical: a reader of her books might well come away with the idea that a state of sin is permissible as long as God is loved. Mme de Maintenon, with all her gifts and her knowledge of the world, really ought to have seen the red light but she found Mme Guyon irresistible. She liked new friends.

  All might have been well had Mme Guyon not taken up her pen; unfortunately she was one of those people who must draw attention to themselves in every possible way. Her books, Les Torrents and Le Moyen Court de Faire l’Oraison, began to be widely read. Bossuet smelt error; Rome smelt Molinism. The Bishop of Chartres asked the resident priests at Saint-Cyr to find out what was going on there, and presently appeared in person to investigate. He told Mme de Maintenon that there was a dangerous atmosphere in her house and that she must get rid of Mme Guyon. Mme de Maintenon made no attempt to stand up for her friend. She put her hand in her apron pocket, drew out Les Torrents, threw it in the fire and went off to forbid Mme Guyon ever to set foot at Saint-Cyr again. Abbé Brémond thinks that she had become jealous of the intimacy between Mme Guyon and Fénelon. Probably, too, she foresaw the annoyance which a religious controversy so near home would cause the King, and wanted to be safely under shelter before the storm broke. She was never loyal to her friends if this was likely to make difficulties for her with him.

  The Bishop of Chartres assembled the Dames, in 1693, exposed the errors of Quietism and begged them to forget such a dangerous doctrine. He merely drove it underground. Mme de La Maisonfort became the apostle of Mme Guyon, smuggled her letters into the convent, copied them out and passed them round. Mme de Maintenon asked for the books to be given up, but some copies were hidden away, to be read at times when the nuns were supposed to be busy.

  Fénelon was not prepared to admit that Mme Guyon was in error; he bitterly reproached Mme de Maintenon for not having sent for him to come to Saint-Cyr and settled the affair. Mme de Maintenon, who liked him much less since his letter to her, prepared to throw him overboard. She persuaded the King, who was by now the only person at Versailles unaware of what was going on, to appoint Fénelon to the vacant archbishopric of Cambrai. The King, who had just received and been annoyed by his own letter from Fénelon, thought (as she did) that this would be a way of seeing less of him at Court. He willingly agreed. Fénelon was consecrated by Bossuet at Saint
-Cyr (1695) in the presence of his pupils, the King’s grandsons, and of Mme de Maintenon. Mme Guyon was not there, nor any of the Dames.

  The Bishop of Chartres had a feeling that all was still not well at Saint-Cyr; he went back there, searched the cells and the library himself and found a quantity of inflammable literature. He confiscated it all, including some pamphlets by Fénelon. The feeling in the convent was such that Mme de Maintenon begged Bossuet to come and talk to the Dames. He preached two sermons and then saw the young women separately. Mme de La Maisonfort was the only one brave enough to argue with him; and Bossuet, who thought her very attractive, was astounded by the brilliance of her theology. Sometimes even he found no means of putting her in the wrong and had to fall back on: ‘One has to take all this with a grain of salt’. Certainly a grain of salt was needed to bring the rainbow theories of Quietism down to earth.

  Mme Guyon went to Meaux to be examined by Bossuet. He was not the least charmed by her, and he found thirty-four articles in her works which he declared dangerous to the discipline of the Church. Fénelon energetically supported, if not all her doctrine, at least the purity of her life and her intentions, which had been put in question. His own writings now came under fire and the great controversy between him and Bossuet began, inflamed, it must be said, by Mme de Maintenon. If she saw any signs of its fizzling out, she would write to the Archbishop of Paris or whisper in the King’s ear to make sure they were not losing interest. In 1698 the affair went to Rome and went against Fénelon, who was obliged to make a public act of submission in his own cathedral. The Pope, however, was heard to remark that if M. de Cambrai loved God too much, M. de Meaux loved his neighbour too little.

  This affair broke up the holy set at Versailles. The Chevreuses and Beauvilliers remained faithful to Fénelon; they thought Mme de Maintenon had behaved badly to him; she was displeased with them for taking his side. But for all her influence with the King she was never able to bring about the disgrace of Beauvilliers. Twice he thought she had succeeded and that he would be obliged to go, but the King trusted and respected him too much; and he kept all his appointments and his place with the Duc de Bourgogne.

  It is significant that the King had no idea that anything was amiss at Saint-Cyr until the quarrel between Fénelon and Bossuet made it impossible for Mme de Maintenon to keep him in the dark any longer. For a long time Quietism had been the burning topic among those very courtiers of whom he saw the most. From now until the end of his life one wonders how much he knew about any happenings in France. As Mme de Maintenon had foreseen, when at last he realized what had been going on under his nose for years, he was extremely angry. He looked into Mme Guyon’s teachings and said they were the ravings of a mad-woman. Mme de Maintenon tried reading to him some of the passages which had so charmed her; he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘These are day-dreams’. But he saw the danger of these day-dreams, knowing too well the fatal fascination that new ideas always had for his subjects. Indeed, the Court, Paris and the provinces were now talking of nothing but Quietism. The Jansenists were gloating over the state to which, they said, the Jesuits had reduced religion in France. The King hated any form of religious enthusiasm; he had enough trouble as it was with the Protestants and the Jansenists; he very much disliked Rome meddling in French affairs. The Vatican was an international body which he loathed. Furthermore this public quarrel between the tutors of his son and his grandsons was unseemly. He said of Fénelon: ‘Of all the clever men in my kingdom he is the most unreal’; and he nearly had words with the thirteen-year-old Bourgogne who firmly supported his adored master.

  The King vented his fury on Mme de La Maisonfort who was sent away from Saint-Cyr, as Mme de Brinon had been, secretly, by the garden gate, after crying all night. She went to a convent at Meaux; Bossuet was most good to her but her life was blighted. Mme Guyon spent the next eight years in the Bastille and was then allowed to go and live with her son. Fénelon was never seen at the Court again. He remained in his bishopric until his death seventeen years later, ageing under the dreadful weight of the hope, always postponed and finally extinguished, that Bourgogne would succeed to the throne.

  At one moment Mme de Maintenon thought the end had come, for her. She took to her bed. The King did not go near her. Then he heard that she was really ill, went to her room and said, not unkindly, ‘This business is killing you, Madame’. At last the Bishop of Chartres intervened, begging the King to take his excellent companion back into his confidence which, probably nothing loth, he did.

  Finally the King paid a state visit to Saint-Cyr. He assembled the Dames and the elder children and told them he was sorry he had been obliged to be so strict but that unsound doctrine was too dangerous to be allowed to proliferate. Then he sat in their midst and chatted with them. After that, Quietism was extinguished for ever at Saint-Cyr. It was now sixteen years since Mme de Brinon had founded a little school at Rueil. The house duly became a retreat and a tomb for Mme de Maintenon. The Dames were her adoring slaves; they wrote down every word she said to them; she destroyed all other documents relevant to her strange destiny before she died, well aware that a flattering memorial existed in their archives.

  Most of the girls who did not marry — and they were in the majority — took the veil, on Mme de Maintenon’s advice. She said it would be preferable to going home and there being obliged to look after infirm, widowed and probably eccentric parents. Saint-Cyr thus became a holy establishment for old maids; and Mme de Maintenon was satisfied. She thought that this was what she had always intended.

  15. LORD PORTLAND’S EMBASSY

  Il y a une infinité de conduites qui paraissent ridicules, et dont les raisons cachées sont très sages et très solides.

  LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

  During the last years of the seventeenth century the thoughts of statesmen were almost entirely occupied with the question of who should succeed to the throne of Spain. The Spanish King, Charles II (half-brother of Marie-Thérèse), was certainly not long for this world. After the death of Monsieur’s daughter he had married again, a Bavarian princess; but, on account of the state secret sent back to Versailles by his first wife, she had no children either and the huge Spanish empire was without an heir. It consisted of Spain, most of Italy, the Catholic Netherlands, the Balearic Islands, most of Morocco, all South America except Brazil, a great deal of North America including Mexico, and the Antilles. The American possessions were lumped together under the name of Les Indes. Nearest in blood to Charles II were the Emperor, the Grand Dauphin and a Bavarian prince aged four; the Grand Dauphin had a better right to succeed King Charles than the other two because his mother was the eldest daughter of Philip IV and his grandmother had also been a Spanish princess. True, they had both renounced their claim to the Spanish crown on marrying kings of France; but, with a little legal jiggery-pokery these renunciations could be declared void. Most Spaniards preferred an Austrian claimant, partly because the two countries had already been united under a single emperor and partly because of an age-old hatred and distrust of their French neighbour. Neither the Emperor Leopold nor Louis XIV was so mad as to contemplate putting his heir on the Spanish throne: the other European countries would have all banded together immediately to prevent such an agglomeration of power, but they both claimed it for cadets of their families — the Emperor for Archduke Charles, his second son, and Louis for the Duc d’Anjou, the second of his three grandsons. Even so there was the danger of a European war. Nobody wanted this, Louis having exhausted not only France but most of western Europe with twenty-five years of almost continual conflict; and a serious effort was made to regulate the matter by diplomacy.

  Old enemies as they were, Louis XIV and William of Orange recognized each other as the only statesmen of any importance in Europe. As Louis himself remarked, they had only to join forces in order to dictate to the universe. William’s situation was very different from what it had been in the early days of their rivalry; he was King of England now as well as Stadholder
of Holland; the acknowledged leader of the whole Protestant world. The two men were anxious to know each other’s views and intentions in the Spanish affair; each chose his most brilliant diplomatist to send to the other.

  Hans William Bentinck, Earl of Portland, went to France. He had two objects in view, both delicate; he was to try and persuade Louis XIV to send James II further away from England than Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where, surrounded by English exiles and receiving all the malcontents from over the Channel, he was busily plotting the assassination of William and his own return to the throne. Portland was also to find out Louis XIV’s plans for Spain. He had already negotiated the Peace of Ryswick (1697) ending the wars that had followed the persecution of the Protestants. He and Maréchal de Boufflers had thrashed out the terms, walking up and down in an orchard together without any of the usual formalities. One of the clauses which Louis XIV had been obliged to accept, albeit reluctantly, as he knew how much it would hurt the feelings of his cousin King James, was that he must recognize William as King of England.

  Portland was chosen for these delicate tasks for two reasons. First, he knew King William’s thoughts and intentions as nobody else could, since he had been heart’s brother of the King all their lives. William never confided the secrets of his foreign policy to Englishmen; who he thought cared nothing for foreign affairs and seemed to ignore the existence of other lands, beyond the sea. He was having a difficult time with his new subjects, now that the honeymoon was over. In so far as the English took account of foreigners, they felt that the best of a poor bunch were the Dutch. Though they had been at war with them so recently, they bore them no grudge; on the contrary they respected them as honest Protestant sea-faring folks like themselves, and sworn enemies of the abhorred French. The idea of William the Silent has always appealed to the English; he may be said to be an honorary Englishman. So when the time came to get rid of the hopeless James, they were not displeased that the crown should go to Mary and her Dutch husband. What was their distress when this honest Dutchman turned out to be a product of French civilization — speaking, writing and thinking in French, obviously more at home with Frenchmen than with the native lords. Like the Prince Consort, William was appreciated by his English subjects only after his death when he was to become, in the eyes of more than one historian, our greatest king. As for his shadow, Hans William Bentinck, he spoke not a word of English and was frankly unpopular among his new countrymen: his brilliant social gifts were wasted on those of them who had no French and the money, lands and honours which William showered on him were a cause of much jealousy. He was known as The Wooden Man.