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

by Hilton, Lisa

  Monsieur flaunted his homosexuality as the only form of distinction permitted him. When young, he had proved himself an able as well as a highly decorative soldier, arriving on the field hatless (for fear of crushing his wig) in a splendid get-up complete with powder, rouge, fluttering ribbons and diamond jewelry. Louis, however, disapproved of his brother distinguishing himself in war, and encouraged him to retire from the army. Monsieur’s château at St. Cloud was celebrated for its beauty, and he was the arbiter elegantiarum for the whole court, but his love of art could not compensate for his sense of super-fluity, and he became rather embittered, loving his brother for the distinctions he conferred, but hating him for keeping him in a state of financial dependence, forced to dance attendance on the royal whims like all the other courtiers. “Now we are going to work, go and amuse yourself, brother,” Louis would say condescendingly. Monsieur was a great friend to Athénaïs as well as to her sister, Mme. de Thianges, but he was influenced by a malign cabal of minions who tried to wheedle favor through exploiting his weakness for a pretty face. Most prominent among them were the Marquis d’Effiat and the Chevalier de Lorraine, Monsieur’s lover. Monsieur was completely under the sway of his poisonous little darling, so much so that Louis had exiled Lorraine from the court early in 1670 as a result of Madame’s reports of her husband’s increasing abandonment to debauchery. It was Lorraine, the rumormongers whispered, who had procured in Rome the fatal poison with which Monsieur had destroyed his wife. There had never been much love lost between them — indeed, their quarrels and sulks were common knowledge — but the part Madame had played in the exile of the Chevalier had put her in danger, and she berated her husband for her murder even as she lay dying. Monsieur, unperturbed, even suggested that the chicory water be tested on a dog. His sanguinity was supported by the autopsy, which confirmed that Henriette had died of natural causes. “Thus,” wrote Lord Arlington, the English secretary of state, “were allayed most of our suspicions,”7 but the qualification testifies to an enduring doubt.

  With heartless pragmatism, Louis proposed the vacant position of Duchesse d’Orléans to his cousin Mademoiselle while the previous incumbent’s body was barely cold. Mademoiselle was disgusted, though not by her cousin’s indelicacy but at the suggestion that she, the greatest heiress in Europe, who had refused the hands of five monarchs and innumerable lesser suitors, should ally herself with this strutting, preening younger son. Impossible! Perhaps her refusal was a deliberate snub to the Bourbons, since in her youth Mademoiselle had set her cap at Louis, but then ruined her chances by taking the opposing side in the Fronde wars.

  It might seem surprising that Mademoiselle, a member of the royal family, should have sided against the King, but in essence the Fronde was not antimonarchical so much as anti-Mazarin. During Louis’s minority, the Frondeurs had wanted to offer the regency to Gaston d’Orléans instead of to Anne of Austria, who, it was perceived, was entirely ruled by Mazarin. Mazarin was unpopular with the old aristocracy, and though the Prince de Condé had saved the monarchy by riding furiously to Paris with his troops at Mazarin’s request when the regency was contested, he soon grew irritated at taking orders from the cardinal. Condé did not seem to understand that he could not oppose the King’s minister without opposing the King, and in 1649 he had sent his personal army to aid the Frondeurs in the French provinces. As a result, Mazarin had had him arrested, and in 1650 Condé retaliated by trying to seize Paris. As his troops attempted to storm the town, Mademoiselle tried to rouse her father, Gaston, to come to his aid. Gaston prevaricated, so Mademoiselle, magnificent but misguided, rushed to the Bastille and, claiming that she was acting on his authority, had the cannons turned on the King’s troops. “She has killed her husband,” remarked Mazarin,8 watching the battle, as Mademoiselle’s hopes of marrying Louis went up in smoke. When order was restored, Mademoiselle had been invited to “retire” for a while, and though both she and Condé were eventually rehabilitated and permitted to return to court, she felt cheated of the crown she was convinced she deserved.

  Mademoiselle was suspicious of Monsieur, and believed the rumors that he had poisoned his wife. She expressed a sharp concern for her own safety, remarking tartly to Monsieur: “As it is not likely that I should ever come to terms with your favorites, I shall never be anything else to you but a cousin, and I shall endeavor not to die before the proper time ...You can repeat this speech to your precious Marquis d’Effiat and M. de Lorraine. They have no access to my kitchens, I am not afraid of them.”

  Monsieur did marry again, as soon as the official period of mourning was over. The royal house of France needed heirs, and of Louis’s children with the Queen, only the Dauphin had lived. The Bourbons were not a lucky family when it came to wives. Like his brother before him, poor little Monsieur turned famously pale when he caught sight of his strapping new spouse for the first time. “How will I be able to sleep with her?” he groaned. The lady in question was Elisabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Palatine, known as La Palatine or Liselotte to her family. A Valkyrie of a woman, she was large, stout and red-faced, and cheerfully open about her own ugliness. She was passionate about hunting, eating and her brother-in-law, a fascination that Louis returned with uneasy affection. She and Athénaïs never hit it off as Athénaïs was less than kind about the new Madame’s appearance, and La Palatine was wary of Athénaïs’s quick French wit. They had no sense of humor in common, as Madame’s taste in jokes was for the slapstick and lavatorial. She describes in her enormous correspondence one evening chez Orléans during which Monsieur “let off a great long fart. He turned to me and said, ‘What was that, Madame?’ I turned my behind in his direction, let off one in the same tone and said, ‘That, Monsieur.’ My son said, ‘If it comes to that, I can do as well as Monsieur and Madame,’ and let off a good one, too. Then we all laughed.”9 It is hard to imagine Athénaïs deriving much amusement from such horseplay. But La Palatine was not a total boor. She loved the theater, and was a vivid, if not elegant writer. Monsieur did manage to do his duty to France and give her three children, assisted by the attachment of his rosary to a certain part of his body, which resulted in a great deal of rattling under the blankets. Louis allowed the Chevalier de Lorraine to come back as a reward for his brother’s good behavior, so Monsieur had good reason to be grateful to Madame. So all in all, this unlikely match was much more successful than his first marriage. Monsieur was particularly pleased that his tomboyish wife cared more for her riding habits than for court finery, as it gave him the freedom to bedeck himself in her jewels as well as his own. “Monsieur is the most foolish woman at court,” ran a contemporary joke, “and Madame the most foolish man.”

  Mademoiselle, meanwhile, had more personal reasons for refusing Monsieur’s hand. Her real motivation may have been that, aged forty-three, she had fallen in love for the first time. It was her romance that provided Athénaïs with a definitive opportunity to involve herself in court politics.

  The object of Mademoiselle’s long-dormant passion was Athénaïs’s old friend the Comte de Lauzun. Although Athénaïs had not quite forgiven Lauzun for intimating that he had once been her lover, she was incapable of bearing grudges, and she liked Lauzun’s wit as much as she was amused by his strutting, Gascon arrogance. When her second child by Louis, a boy, was born, at St. Germain in the winter of 1670, it was Lauzun who was entrusted with smuggling him out of the palace. Athénaïs barely had time to see the child before he was wrapped up, hidden under Lauzun’s coat, and smuggled through the freezing park to a hired carriage waiting at the gate. It was the kind of drama they both enjoyed.

  Despite his stunted, flabby body and indifferent title, the lieutenant of the armies enjoyed great success with women, which he had manipulated to elevate himself from a lowly beginning as a simple soldier to his present powerful position. If his ardor was not aroused by Mademoiselle’s less-than-beauteous middle-aged charms, then his insatiable ambition certainly was. If he could become Mademoiselle’s
husband, he would become the Duc de Montpensier, first cousin by marriage to the King, and the richest man in France. Mademoiselle, for her part, was as ridiculously enamored as a convent virgin of fourteen, and so determined to marry her lover that Louis, with great reluctance, gave his consent to the match. “I do not advise it,” he said, “but I will not forbid it, though I beg you to be careful — Many people dislike M. de Lauzun.” Dazzled by each other, Mademoiselle and Lauzun began to plan an ostentatious state wedding.

  The reaction to this engagement is best captured by Mme. de Sévigné in a letter dated 15 December 1670:

  What I am about to communicate to you is the most astonishing thing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, most triumphant, most baffling, most unheard of, most singular, most extraordinary, most unbelievable, most unforeseen, biggest, tiniest, rarest, commonest, the most talked about, the most secret up to this day, the most brilliant, the most enviable...in short a thing that will be done on Sunday.10

  Such a match was indeed unheard of, but while Mme. de Sévigné and her set considered it a tremendous joke, one faction at court saw it as a serious threat to the King’s authority. The Queen, Monsieur, the Prince de Condé and his son M. le Duc, the princesses of the blood and Mademoiselle’s sister Mme. de Guise all petitioned the King to undo his consent, terrified of the precedent that would be set if a commoner were allowed to marry into the royal family. This obsessive concern for breeding seems slightly ridiculous today, but it was the dominant social force of the times, and treated with deadly seriousness. Feeling ran so high that the Maréchal de Villeroy threw himself on his knees before Louis, imploring him to prevent a union that would so seriously diminish the royal reputation. Athénaïs, however, found herself in the opposite camp.

  Lauzun and Athénaïs had more than the secret of the birth of Athénaïs’s child in common, for Lauzun had also been instrumental in facilitating the Nevers marriage for Athénaïs’s niece. “Mme. de Montespan does marvels everywhere,” wrote Mme. de Sévigné, impressed by the success of the unlikely match that repaired the Thianges fortunes. So it seemed right that Athénaïs, who was also fond of Mademoiselle, should pursue Lauzun’s interest with Louis, and she promised to do all she could to help to counter the appeals against the marriage. Soon, though, she began to doubt the wisdom of her promise, so strong did the opposition seem. She herself received a visit from the Princesse de Carignan, who asked her to use her influence with Louis to prevent it, on the grounds that he had regretted giving his consent from the moment he had done so. Athénaïs, seeing the way the wind was blowing, realized that her own position would be compromised if she found herself on the losing side. And so, with a rather dishonorable motive of self-preservation, she betrayed Lauzun and advised Louis to put an end to the affair. Undoubtedly, hers was the decisive intervention.

  On 18 December, Louis summoned his cousin and Lauzun and told them he could not permit the wedding to go ahead. The settlement had already been made, and Lauzun had been the bearer of the name of Montpensier for a whole day, but it was not to be. He could not allow his rage to show, being obliged instead to make a great performance of his broken heart. Mademoiselle’s grief was sincere and vociferous. She railed and wept and took to her bed, but breeding conquered in the end, and by 24 December she had collected herself sufficiently to return her duty calls. “So that is that,” concludes Mme. de Sévigné bluntly.11 Lauzun retained the goodwill of the King by exhibiting just the right blend of sadness and stoicism, and Athénaïs was in high favor with those in the know for her good judgment, having remained apparently strong in Louis’s moment of weakness, bringing “joy not only [to] the court, but to the whole realm in the rupture of this marriage for which no example can be found in history.” Skillfully, Athénaïs concealed her involvement from Mademoiselle, but she had turned her friend Lauzun into an implacable enemy, and he set about plotting his revenge.

  In 1671, Athénaïs’s position was still sufficiently ambiguous for it to be plausible that the King would return to Louise, and Lauzun planned to precipitate the favorite’s downfall by bringing this about. Louise was still hanging on with masochistic tenacity, partly out of concern for the position of her children, and partly in the hope that she would return to favor. Louise’s apologists claim that she remained at court in the role of a suffering martyr, publicly expiating her sins, but this is an explanation provided retrospectively by Louise herself. At the time, she showed herself to be weak yet stubborn, and not above attempts to manipulate the King’s remaining affection, a tendency which Lauzun hoped to exploit.

  Historians are at odds as to the cordiality of the entente between the two women. In the code used by Mme. de Sévigné to avoid censorship of her gossipy letters, she refers to Athénaïs and Louise respectively as “the Torrent” and “the Dew,” nicknames that neatly sum up their characters and the inevitable conflicts between them. Publicly, at least, everything went on harmoniously, as is demonstrated by one record of Louis and his two women departing to hunt the wild boar at Fontainebleau in the same carriage. On another occasion, the English envoy the Duke of Buckingham was received by Lauzun while the King was still officially in mourning for Henri-ette d’Angleterre. After supper, Athénaïs and Louise appeared, led by the hands of a masked cavalier, and all three performed a charming ballet, at the conclusion of which the ladies “chased” Louis (for of course it was he) for his diamond-studded sword. This Louis presented to Buckingham in an elegant piece of diplomacy centered on his knowing play on words: “Since the ladies have disarmed me, I offer you my sword.” The gift was worth 16,000 ecus.

  To maintain the pretense that Louis was still in love with Louise, she and Athénaïs were always lodged in adjoining rooms, where they shared their meals, their toilette and their leisure time. During the military campaign of 1673, for example, Louis gave Colbert precise instructions, along with a plan, for his ladies’ lodgings. Athénaïs’s room was to have direct access to his own, while Louise’s, next door to Athénaïs’s, should be separated from it by a discreet passage.

  Louis was scrupulous about appearing fair to the odalisques in his seraglio. In 1669 his architect Jean Marot was commissioned to create four grottos in the rocaille style at a cost of 1,000 livres each, two for the Duchesse de La Vallière and two for Mme. de Montespan. Pointedly, Louise’s was decorated with a fresco of Calypso mourning her abandonment by Ulysses. Everyone knew that when the King was “chez les dames,” as the polite euphemism ran, he passed through Louise’s room only to gain access to Athénaïs’s. One spiteful story has it that Louis had a spaniel (named Malice in some versions), which he tossed to Louise as he passed, saying, “Here, Madame, take your company. That will do for you.” Given Louis’s famous good manners towards women, this seems somewhat unlikely, but it is common to hate those whom we have wronged, and Louis in particular was not a man who was comfortable with the dissonance of guilt. He was intrinsically vastly selfish, and though he was good-mannered because graceful manners pleased him, he was utterly indifferent to the feelings of others if they compromised his own inclinations. Louise’s mute, reproachful grieving must have been at once painful and exasperating to the King, and incensing to Athénaïs.

  A great deal has been made of Athénaïs’s cruelty to the fallen favorite; of how she turned all her capacity for bitchy wit on to poor Louise and forced her to act as a ladies’ maid, dressing Athénaïs’s hair in preparation for a rendezvous with the King. “The Montespan woman,” wrote the Princess Palatine, “derided La Vallière in public, treated her abominably, and obliged the King to do likewise.” If Athénaïs really was so unkind (and La Palatine, of course, had her own reasons for disliking Mme. de Montespan), then surely Louise’s infuriating lack of dignity provides some excuse? It seems reasonable that Athénaïs should feel just as threatened by Louise’s presence as Louise was by hers. Athénaïs was in a position akin to that of a second wife whose wishes are constantly thwarted by her husband’s duty to a demanding
ex, and her lack of patience, if not the way in which she manifested it, is understandable. As long as Louise was there, Athénaïs could not be certain that the King loved her exclusively. She was quite justified in this doubt. One of the quarrels between the two women erupted over a pot of marvelous rouge which Louise refused to lend to Athénaïs. She agreed to surrender it only when Louis intervened, and even then, only on condition that he distribute his favors equally. The result was that Louise fell pregnant again, and storms raged in the harem. (Presumably Louise lost the child, as no more mention is made of it.) She remained a thorn in Athénaïs’s side, making a great fuss of the angelic patience with which she withstood her rival’s attempts to drive her out.

  It is difficult to find a reason for Louis’s desire to keep both women quite so close to him, especially in view of the trouble it occasioned him. Yet this was a model he repeated throughout his life. The current mistress usually presented him to the new, after which both women would be maintained in uneasy cohabitation. This was the case with Madame Henriette and La Vallière (although it is unlikely that in this case Louis actually slept with his sister-in-law), with La Vallière and Montespan, with Montespan and Mlle. de Fontanges and finally with Montespan and Mme. de Maintenon. Louis was clearly polygamous by temperament, and saw no reason to resist his inclinations.