Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France

by Hilton, Lisa

  From 1674 onwards, the court took up a partial residence at Versailles, but it was not until 1682 that the building was ready for a permanent move. The relocation of the court has often been attributed to Louis’s dislike of Paris, a city tainted by childhood memories of the development of the wars of the Fronde, but this argument is as unjust as it is often repeated. The last winter Louis spent in Paris was that of 1670, twenty years after the Fronde, and too much emphasis is placed on the idea that he somehow found the town traumatizing. Louis did prefer Versailles, but not because he hated the Louvre. Rather, Versailles provided an appropriate backdrop for his sovereignty in a way that his town palaces, which had developed rather haphazardly from the fortified castles of a more warlike age, never could. His move was not an attempt to punish Paris, on which he lavished a great deal of money throughout his reign.

  The construction of the central apartments, on a direct east–west axis, allowed the King’s day to reflect the movements of the sun’s cycle, and every room in the château was oriented towards this symbol of power. In Le Notre’s plans for the park, the water ran from north to south, creating the suggestion that the two contrary elements were harmonized by Louis’s presence. The “space” of Versailles, its staircases and diagonal perspectives, opened with movement, so that the rhythms of the King’s day corresponded with the rhythmic successions of the rooms. The visitor is guided, as by an orator through a speech, through the “ideas” of the building. Versailles embodies a social hierarchy which has the King at its summit; the favor a courtier enjoyed could be calculated architecturally by how far he was allowed to progress through the rooms and courtyards towards the person of the King. The Cour Royale, the Cour des Ministres and finally the Cour de Marbre, in the heart of the building, were all subject to strict gradations of precedent. Louis was passionate about the aesthetics of his château. When Mansart protested that the chimneys would smoke if their position was not altered, the King replied that he didn’t care about the smoke as long as it did not spoil the view. Drafts didn’t concern him provided his doors were splendidly symmetrical. If there was no town, then a town would grow where the King was. If there was no water, then the King would force it to flow. And as Louis controlled the structure of his house, so he would control its inhabitants. The etiquette of Versailles mirrored the fact that in its every aspect, the château was a testament to the King’s God-given majesty. More practically, the lesson Louis had learned from the Fronde wars — that an independent nobility was a potential source of insurrection — meant that if he intended to keep the nobility permanently under his eyes, he needed a palace big enough to hold them. Quite literally, Louis’s house had to contain his aristocracy, and thus, artistically and politically, Versailles represents Louis’s personal achievements, the stage for the performance he made of his life.

  The apartments assigned to Athénaïs de Montespan after their completion in 1676 are perhaps the greatest indication of her importance to Louis at the time. Her suite comprised twenty rooms adjacent to the King’s on the second floor of the château, while the Queen had to make do with eleven. It was in Athénaïs’s rooms that she and Louis would closet themselves in the window where Athénaïs made the King laugh until he ached with her remarks about those who passed beneath. The courtiers came to dislike this habit so much that they referred to walking under her windows as “going before the guns.” Even the Queen was not safe. Once, during a promenade, her carriage forded a stream and filled with water, and Athénaïs declared that if she had been there, she would have called out, “La Reine boit,” punning on the similarity of the verbs “to drink” and “to limp.” Louis could not help laughing, but he would sternly remind Athénaïs that Marie-Thérèse was still her mistress. In fact, though Athénaïs’s jokes were often cruel, she herself was not really malicious, or méchante. She would pour vitriol on bores and flatterers, but once she had made Louis laugh, she forgot her unkindness, as she never really meant to offend anyone, and much as the courtiers hated being the butt of her jokes, they never lost a taste for them.

  Athénaïs was sometimes accused of callousness, but her ruthless lack of sentimentality might more accurately be seen as a reflection of an age which was much less compassionate, far more cruel. When Athénaïs’s coach ran over a man and killed him, her companions reproached her because she did not burst into tears as they had done, but she accused them of hypocrisy, arguing that they were weeping at their own distress at the terrible sight and not for the victim. After all, people were run over all the time without causing grief among the court ladies. Mme. de Sévigné is equally realistic about the brutalities of the world she inhabited. Writing to her daughter with news of a battle in 1676, she reports cheerfully: “Condé was taken by storm the night of Saturday to Sunday. At first this news makes your heart beat faster; you think we must have paid dearly for this victory. Not at all, my dear, it only cost a few soldiers, and not one with a name.” Emotion was saved for family or friends; the misfortunes of others were part of God’s will and therefore a waste of feeling. Indeed, delight in cruelty was a disturbing pleasure for people of all classes, and the scaffold at the Place de Grève was as popular an outing as the opera or a good sermon. The master of the future Parisian doctor Noel Falcon-net wrote to the boy’s father that, as a reward for studying hard, he was treating his pupil to a viewing of a man being broken on the wheel. This was the more barbaric face of the occasionally caustic wit Athénaïs had learned to display in the salons of Paris, a symptom of a world where amusement and pain coexisted in far closer proximity than they do today.

  Athénaïs shared Louis’s passion for Versailles and had an equal taste for splendor, but like Louis she was not above the practical. The King took great pride in his kitchen garden, with its lettuces, cabbages, peaches and his favorite strawberries, and had no reservations about giving the Doge of Venice or the Siamese ambassador a tour of his vegetable patch. He even wrote and printed his own guidebook to the gardens of Versailles. Athénaïs delighted him with her design for a fountain, built on what is now the Bassin d’Apollon, which was based on a gilded weeping willow with over one hundred jets of water gushing from its branches. The water tree impressed everyone with its ingenuity, as did the exquisite porcelain Trianon which Louis had constructed for Athénaïs in 1670 on the site of a demolished village. This was a series of miniature pavilions made of blue and white Delft tiles enclosed by flower gardens of anemones, Spanish jasmine, tuberoses and orange trees which produced the intoxicating perfumes Louis and Athénaïs loved. It was a toy house, a house to make love in, and it says a good deal about Mme. de Maintenon’s character that she later claimed it was too cold and had it pulled down.

  Another lesson Louis had absorbed from Mazarin’s predecessor, Richelieu, was that the “mythologization” of the monarchy was a powerful instrument for cultural unity and control. The arts could be used to exalt the King and to manipulate the opinion of the educated classes into a consciousness of national glory.

  During Louis’s adolescence, the dominant influence on culture in Paris was Italian, and the King was anxious to develop an indigenous style of French painting, music and dance which would be unique to his own court. Richelieu had, for example, turned the court ballets into political allegories, with the identification of the monarch with the sun as a prominent motif. As the decoration of Versailles had established, it was an ideal metaphor for the artistic representation of royal power. In 1621, Louis XIII had danced in the ballet Le Soleil, taking on the image of the sun with its overtones of divinity. The classical origins of the sun cult were numerous, but one of Louis’s favorite incarnations, as we have seen, was that of Apollo, the sun god, and his encouragement of French culture was in some sense a pacific “Apollonian” counterpoint to the other arts his reign celebrated, those of Mars. The sun god is the center of the universe, and the begetter of the arts which glorify his power. Every work of art created in his reign, Louis believed, formed a fragment of his personal glory. Yet while A
pollo is a leitmotif in Louis XIV’s personal iconography, in Molière’s comedy Amphitryon, the King took on the role of Jupiter.

  In the play the conflict between the King, his mistress and her husband was played out on a literal stage, at the Tuileries on 16 January 1668, and before Athénaïs could enjoy her promising future, she had to await the dénouement of the piece. The stately masque of Versailles was still in the future and for the present, events had a more melodramatic flavor.

  Un partage avec Jupiter

  N’a rien du tout qui déshonoré

  Et sans doute il ne peut être que glorieux

  De se voir le rival du souverain des dieux.2

  Thus Molière has Jupiter console the deceived husband, Amphitryon, who, returning from the wars, discovers that he has been cuckolded by Jupiter, who has taken Amphitryon’s shape to spend a night with his wife Alcmène. The play has been categorized as belonging to the “literature of war” which developed as a subgenre following the King’s return from his first successful military campaign and which also includes Corneille’s Au Roi de Son Retour de Flandre. The implications of Molière’s account of the returning warrior duped by the king of the gods have proved an irresistible parallel to Louis’s affair with Athénaïs, though the play cannot be read as a rigorous allegory; it is, after all, an adaptation from Plautus, and was also adapted by the English poet Dryden. Given the general toleration of a king’s extramarital dalliances, Molière could presume that his audience would respond with a degree of sophisticated amusement to any allusions the piece seemed to cast on current events. Jupiter’s justification reflected the opinion of the court that to be cuckolded by the King was no disgrace. Conversely, a change of maîtresse en titre amounted to an affair of state, and the court cabals would be anxious to learn about the situation so that they could realign their loyalties and know who to cultivate. Thus Molière’s reference to the affair would have been apposite. Amphitryon is a tempting source of clues to the extent of public knowledge of Louis’s relationship with Athénaïs after the 1667 campaign. Did Molière wish to flatter the King by ridiculing the Marquis? Or did Louis take pleasure in seeing his love affair so slyly revealed? Despite the coincidences of life and art, it is best not to see the play as a “key,” particularly as Louise de La Vallière was still the official mistress, and some ambiguity still shrouded Athénaïs’s position. For example, the Marquis de Saint-Maurice, who had observed Louis’s interest in Athénaïs in Flanders, wrote to the Duc de Savoie in February 1668, a month after Amphitryon was performed before the court, that despite the King’s attentions, Mme. de Montespan “still held firm.” At the theater of the court, the drama was just beginning. If the Marquis de Montespan knew of it, he had the sense, for the moment, to hold his tongue.

  While his wife had been campaigning with the King, Montespan, hardly a triumphant Amphitryon, had fought a more or less ignominious campaign of his own near another disputed border with Spain at Roussillon. His conduct was passable at first, and he fought in the front line in a brief skirmish with the Spaniards. Louis, occupied in Paris that autumn of 1667, cleverly magnified the incident in order to soften up Montespan. “The King claims to be very satisfied with the bravery and bearing which you have shown in this encounter,” ran the dispatches, “and His Majesty will give proof of this when he has occasion.”3 If, perhaps, it turned out that Amphitryon would be content to share his wife with Jupiter.

  Delighted to find himself for once in the King’s good graces, and too conceited to question the reason, Montespan celebrated with a little romantic dalliance of his own. He kidnapped a serving-girl in Perpignan and spirited her away disguised as a member of his own cavalry. The girl’s outraged family had her apprehended by the bailiffs and committed to prison for her own safety. Montespan disgraced himself by fighting with the bailiff to recover her, but he soon grew bored and abandoned the girl with a meager dowry of twenty pistoles for her honor, returning early in 1668 to Paris, where he may have seen or heard about Molière’s play. He remained there until 1 March, borrowing yet more money, and appearing to notice nothing odd in his domestic affairs, even though Athénaïs had moved their lodgings from St. Germain to the Rue St. Nicaise on the right bank, supposedly in order to facilitate her attendance on the Queen. Montespan, now in debt to the sum of 48,000 livres, could not stay long in Paris for fear of his creditors. Before setting off with his company back to Roussillon, he signed a document giving Athénaïs power of attorney over his affairs in his absence, demonstrating that at this stage he still had complete trust in his wife, even if he appeared to be indifferent to her welfare. He received notice of leave in June, and spent some time at his château, Bonnefont in Gascony, before returning to Paris at the end of the summer.

  In September, the court were at Chambord, the childhood home of Louise de La Vallière, who still remained at court as favorite to shelter Athénaïs from scandal, a bizarre arrangement that continued for a total of six years. Louis made love to her absentmindedly from time to time, but had really lost all interest in her. Louise attempted a symbolic reproach to the King at Chambord, indicating a window which contained a famous couplet, supposedly scratched on the glass by François I: “Souvent femme varié/Mal habie qui s’y fie” — Woman is often fickle/Foolish the man who trusts her. Annoyed, Louis had the pane removed. Athénaïs was typically less reticent, complaining to Louis in no uncertain terms about his want of delicacy. Failing to placate her, Louis admitted that the situation had come about “insensiblement.” “Insensibly for you, perhaps,” sniffed Athénaïs, “but very sensibly for me!”4 It appears that Louis was dissembling, since something in his character clearly found this “harem” model appealing: it was to be repeated throughout his life. Perhaps he felt that Jupiter had the right to more than one woman at a time.

  At the time of the visit to Chambord, Athénaïs discovered to her horror that she was pregnant. She was so anxious that she lost weight and her complexion faded. Mme. de Caylus wrote: “She is so changed that no one would recognize her.” Until now, Athénaïs’s husband had remained as ignorant as Molière’s cuckold of the affair, but now the storm would surely break. No amount of classicized double entendres could conceal the fact that double adultery was a serious and shocking offense. The King’s confessors would turn a blind eye to legions of seduced maids-of-honor, but a married man who cohabited with a married woman committed sacrilege in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Moreover, Montespan could legally claim any children his wife bore by the King as his own. Athénaïs was so frightened of this that she even considered asking Louise to pretend that the baby was hers.

  Athénaïs was frantic, but she rallied herself and concealed the source of her despair under a new style of dress she had invented, a robe battante in loose, flowing chiffon. She was able to remain inconspicuous when the dress, slyly known as l’Innocente, immediately became the height of fashion. If Athénaïs suffered from the shame of this first pregnancy, “She consoled herself for the second,” wrote Mme. de Caylus, “and carried her impudence about the others as far as possible.” Later, everyone at court knew that if Mme. de Montespan was wearing her robe battante, she must be pregnant again.

  When the time came for Athénaïs to give birth to their first child, Louis took charge of the arrangements personally. He rented a little house in the Rue de l’Echelle, not far from the Tuileries. As Athénaïs’s labor began, Clément, the accoucheur, was summoned, blindfolded and pushed into a darkened room. When his eyes were uncovered, he saw a masked woman in the bed. The candles were put out. The doctor began to voice his opinion on such an odd arrangement, declaring that he was sure this secrecy must be concealing a scandal. He was silenced by a man’s voice from the bed curtains, instructing him that he was there to do a job, and not to deliver a moral discourse. Clément then grumbled that he was hungry, and really couldn’t begin until he had eaten. A young man slipped out from the shadows and rummaged around, producing some bread and jam, which the doctor munched appreciatively, ad
ding that a little wine to wash it down wouldn’t go amiss. “Have patience,” muttered the King, “I can’t do everything at once.”

  “Finally,” remarked the doctor as a full glass was produced.

  Just as he was about to ask for another, a groan from the bed put an end to the apparently interminable meal, and the doctor rolled up his sleeves. Louis hid once again in the bed curtains and held Athénaïs’s hand, constantly asking when it would be over. The child was delivered about an hour later. Louis had to shield his face as he handed the doctor a candle.

  This charming (if in part apocryphal) story shows Louis, who had probably never prepared a meal in his life, let alone served a bourgeois with a glass of wine, at his most human. For a while, in the dim candlelight, Louis and Athénaïs could have been any young lovers, he stroking her hair and soothing her as he waited anxiously to see his child. So much secrecy surrounded the birth that there is even dispute as to the baby’s gender, but it seems most likely that it was a girl. She was spirited away by one of Athénaïs’s maids, a Mlle. des Oeillets. Her name is not known for certain – it is thought to have been Louise-Françoise, a fitting combination of her parents’ names — for she died, inconspicuously, three years later. Athénaïs was to give her second daughter by Louis, Mlle. de Nantes, born in 1673, the same name as her mysterious elder sister.

  Despite the secrecy surrounding her pregnancy, it could not be long before Montespan discovered Athénaïs’s secret, although it is uncertain how exactly he learned of her betrayal. His father, the old Marquis d’Antin, had taken a sanguine view of the matter. When he heard the story, he lifted up his hands and cried “Praise the Lord! Here is Fortune knocking on my door at last!” Athénaïs’s own father, the Duc de Mortemart, was unkindly supposed to have taken a similar view of his daughter’s moral decline. A court poem describes his reaction to the news of her pregnancy: