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

by Hilton, Lisa

  After months of this strain, even Athénaïs’s courage failed, and in May 1676, while Louis was again away in Holland, she decided to take the cure at Bourbon, ostensibly because she was suffering from rheumatism in the knee, but probably to get away from the unholy alliance of Bossuet and Maintenon. The trip might also have been something of a public-relations exercise to demonstrate to the provinces that she was still the King’s favorite. Bourbon at the time had a similar status and function as eighteenth-century Bath as a watering place and social center for the upper classes. The waters were reputed to cure every ailment from laryngitis, nervousness and rheumatism, to infertility.

  Athénaïs was accompanied by her niece and her sister, Mme. de Thianges, and they traveled in typical style, in a barouche drawn by six splendid horses. Behind followed a coach containing six maids, two wagons, six pack mules, Athénaïs’s bodyguards and a dozen out-riders. In total, the party numbered forty-five. Mme. de Sévigné was following the same route as the royal mistress, a fussy tugboat in the wake of a stately liner, and she avidly reports every detail she was able to glean about the splendid procession. Mme. de Montespan arrives at each staging post to find her room and bed prepared; she dines heartily and then retires. Mme. de Montespan showers gracious streams of gold on every church and convent she passes. Mme. de Montespan receives letters from the army every single day . . .

  Athénaïs paused at Nevers, where she was given an official welcome at the château, and thence proceeded to Bourbon, where none other than Louise de La Vallière’s brother, the Marquis de La Vallière who governed the province, had laid on a formal reception, which she tactfully declined. The cure at Bourbon lasted thirty days, and consisted of a combination of drinking the waters, therapeutic thermal baths, “medicines” such as bleeding and purges, and bed rest. Mme. de Sévigné was enthusiastic about the results, though her modesty was rather tried by the outdoor baths, and she did not venture into the mud pits. She comments on the excellent mix of Vichy and Bourbon water on offer: “These two rivals are accommodated together, it is no more than one heart and one soul. Vichy rests in the breast of Bourbon and warms itself at her fire, that is to say in the boiling of her fountains.” If only the same could have been said of the two marquises.

  From Bourbon, Athénaïs and her party set off for Moulins aboard a magnificent barge, painted and gilded, and furnished, as the indefatigable de Sévigné reports, “in red damask . . . with quantities of devices and streamers in the colors of France and Navarre; there never was anything more romantic.”2 Athénaïs had obtained this magnifi-cent equipage from Gilbert Bourdier de Roche, the intendant of the baths, who considered himself amply reimbursed for the enormous expense by the letter Athénaïs reported she had written to the King, full of praise for his attentiveness. So, as far as the provinces were concerned, Athénaïs’s status clearly remained intact.

  This status was reinforced by the charity she dispensed during her voyage, displaying an inclination towards good works that continued to develop throughout her life. She created twelve new hospital beds, and made a large donation to the Capuchin order. She also engaged in a little sensitive politics. The family of the embezzler Nicolas Fouquet, the disgraced superintendent of finances, at that time incarcerated at Pignerol with Athénaïs’s old friend Lauzun, were also taking the waters at Bourbon. They visited Athénaïs on two consecutive days, discussing “the most delicate subject” at length. Mme. Fouquet earnestly wished to be allowed to join her husband in prison, and she pleaded her case with a good deal of modesty and tact. Athénaïs listened compassionately, and promised to make a report to the King. In fact, the first ameliorations of Fouquet’s imprisonment were put into practice the following year. Athénaïs’s compassion may have been motivated by the fact that her legitimate son, the ten-year-old Marquis d’Antin, was to pay a visit to Mme. Fouquet in the country. Mme. de Sévigné, a champion of the Fouquet family, visited her friend and found the boy good-looking and amusing. It is uncertain whether Athénaïs was able to meet her estranged son in Mme. Fouquet’s company, but perhaps this connection created an empathy between the two women that gave Athénaïs the courage to defend the unfashionable Fouquet cause.

  In July, the King returned. During the celebratory reception given by the Queen at St. Germain, the Marquise de Montespan was suddenly announced. Louis, the stately monarch who struck ambassadors dumb with awe, who surrounded himself with the strictest etiquette, actually ran across the great salon to greet her, and only just held back from taking her in his arms. Naturally, the dévot party were horrified. They managed to keep Athénaïs away from her lover that night, and Mme. de Maintenon hurriedly volunteered to act as a chaperone for the next day’s journey to Versailles. When Louis announced that he intended to visit Athénaïs in her apartments at Clagny, the dévots assembled a party of worthy ladies to supervise the meeting and bear witness to the “pure and simple friendship” the lovers had sworn.

  Athénaïs must have known that this was her last chance. All the witnesses agreed that she looked more beautiful than ever, like a blushing virgin. Louis crossed the room and drew her towards the window. He began to speak pompously, sounding just like Bossuet, but Athénaïs cut him short, murmuring, “It’s useless to read me a ser- mon. I understand that my time is over.” He wept; she wept. Athénaïs, who never cried in public, knew that day how to use her tears. “You are mad,” she said, smiling sadly.

  “Yes, I am mad, since I still love you,” he replied.

  Then they made an elegant bow to the company and withdrew to Athénaïs’s bedroom.

  “And thus,” said Mme. de Caylus with a sniff, “came the arrival of Mme. la Duchesse d’Orléans and M. le Comte de Toulouse.” The King’s soul, it appeared, would have to take care of itself.

  The dévots had prevailed briefly, but in the glorious flesh, Athénaïs was too much for them. Her rare combination of great beauty and superb wit were incomparable. When she entered a room she made other women invisible; when she talked, she rendered them dumb. Louis’s sensual attraction to her was simply too strong for him to resist. The sense of provocation, of competition even, that he felt with her meant that she always excited him, that she was always a challenge to be freshly overcome.

  The priests in their black gowns retired to mutter like disgruntled crows, and with the reconciliation of the lovers, happiness returned to Versailles.

  “Joy has returned and all jealous airs have vanished,” commented Mme. de Sévigné. Athénaïs had never been more fêted, more adored; the King seemed to be in love twice over, and as usual everyone ignored the Queen’s tears. Everything was done to please the triumphant favorite: there were balls, concerts, ballets every day. Bossuet claimed that the death that year of the great general Maréchal de Turenne was a punishment from God for the King’s wickedness, but although Turenne was deeply mourned, no one took much notice of Bossuet’s dire predictions. Mme. de Maintenon was peeved at the mishandling of the affair, declaring that holiness was all very well, but Bossuet was not enough of a courtier. If Athénaïs was ever to be ousted, it would have to be through the wiles of the salon rather than the imprecations of the pulpit.

  The court was anxious to prove itself as friendly to Athénaïs as it had previously been hostile, and Athénaïs celebrated her victory as publicly as she had disguised her defeat, returning the King to his people in a series of glittering entertainments. She was referred to as the maîtresse regnante, a title always conspicuously denied to its proper bearer, the Queen, who stayed often alone in her apartments, solitary and uncourted. Occasionally, Marie-Thérèse amused herself with a Spanish play, to the discomfort of her few unlucky guests, who shivered in the almost empty, cavernous rooms, the majority of the court having made their excuses to join in whatever amusement was being offered by the “real Queen.” It was Athénaïs’s favor that everyone sought, and the vanity that had supported her dignity throughout the period of her humiliation now blazed forth in a determination to subdue Versailles to
her will.

  From one aspiring ally, a courtier named Langlée, Athénaïs received a marvelous dress “of gold on gold,” reports Mme. de Sévigné, “all embroidered with gold, all edged with gold, and on top of that a sort of gold pile stitched with gold mixed with a certain gold, which makes the most divine stuff ever imagined. The fairies have secretly devised this work, no living soul knew anything about it.”3 It was delivered as a surprise. When Athénaïs’s dressmaker arrived, he at first showed her a different dress which did not fit. Having recovered all her imperious airs, Athénaïs terrified the poor man with a tantrum, after which he timidly inquired as to whether, since time was short, another dress might do instead, and produced the gold marvel which, of course, fitted beautifully. Louis arrived to admire it, but wondered who it was from. “Langlée,” answered Athénaïs. “No one else but Langlée could have imagined such magnificence.” For days, Langlée was the name on all the fashionable lips at Versailles.

  Athénaïs’s taste was paramount in sartorial matters. French court fashion is divided into three distinct periods during the reign of Louis XIV, of which the second, and most magnificent, is directly attributed to the influence of Mme. de Montespan. She had already introduced the hurluberlu hairstyle, as copied by Marie-Thérèse, and, as her delight in Langlée’s gift shows, Athénaïs had a taste for sumptuous fabrics. The richness and overdecoration of the fashions of the 1670s bears witness to her love of lace, shimmering fabrics and gold embroidery. Formal dresses were tightly corseted beneath a low boat neck, with an underskirt and an overskirt, or manteau. The first was often made of embroidered taffeta, with the manteau looped up on either side of the hips like a pair of curtains, descending into a train behind, whose length varied according to the social rank of the wearer. In 1676, two new fashions appeared: falbalas, flounces of fabric ornamenting the bodice of the dress, and painted gauzes or transparents, translucent colored materials embroidered with lace or velvet and worn over a plain black gown. Predictably, the Prince de Condé addressed a letter to the court ladies from Chantilly suggesting that the transparents would be more beautiful if worn over bare skin, but Mme. de Sévigné doubted it. Another fashion introduced by Athénaïs was the less formal déshabillé, a style prefigured by the robe battante she had devised to conceal (or announce) her pregnancies. This was a more relaxed, indoor ensemble consisting of a tunic worn over the skirt, and a taffeta scarf to cover the hair. The déshabillé was comfortable as well as being loose and seductive, and Athénaïs adopted it for entertaining in her own apartments. Ever conscious of Louis’s pleasure, she realized that the déshabillé was also easy to remove in private, and made her body more accessible than the complicated petticoats and lacings that took the help of a maid to get in and out of.

  The enduring role of fashion in French culture began to take shape at Versailles, where it represented a symbolic weapon in the battle of etiquette and appearances to which the old aristocracy was being systematically reduced. A longer train or a deeper lace cuff could signify success in the microcosm of the court, where the traditional diffusion of wealth and power was giving way to the King’s new order of autocratic government assisted by men whose families were not drawn from the ancient nobility. The stays worn by an aristocratic woman beneath her heavy court dress were tighter and stiffer than those of a middle-class woman, creating “a proud, imposing, theatrical form, manifesting the qualities of a soul and the virtues of a state.”4 One reason why Athénaïs’s déshabillés were found rather racy was the impression given by such an “undress” of the morals of its wearer. La Palatine was to complain that her daughter-in-law, the Duchesse de Chartres, demonstrated her lazy and dissolute character by refusing to have herself laced up tightly enough. The corset represented the cultivated as opposed to the natural, social control as opposed to permissiveness. For the dévot party, Athénaïs’s languorous silks were the outward manifestation of her sexual power over Louis, and it is no accident that during the subsequent reign of La Maintenon, fashion became more sober, monochrome and buttoned up.

  For both men and women, footwear was symmetrical, pointed and high-heeled, emphasizing the refined idleness of the aristocrat, since any form of real walking was considered rather déclassé. For women, then as now, the high-heeled shoe was an erotic accessory rather than a practical item, and contorted the gait and posture so that only tiny steps were possible beneath their skirts. As a result the ladies of the court glided through the salons of Versailles looking like dolls on wheels. Although Louis was often to be found in his hunting boots, he also favored high-heeled shoes, to boost his height, while Athénaïs, despite the hours she spent in her gardens, showed no interest in outdoor exercise. Monsieur’s hearty German wife, the Princess Palatine, declared to a correspondent that only three people in France — the King, herself and a Mme. de Chevreuse — could walk twenty paces without puffing and sweating. Indeed, to get themselves about the courtiers were obliged to set up a private company of sedan chair-carriers who operated like taxis, stuffing their plump and befrilled cargo into the boxes and laboring in the King’s wake as he made his ritualistic progress around Versailles.

  The uniformity of dress among the upper classes suggests that, for the “quality,” appearance and culture were strongly interconnected. This is demonstrated in Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, which made its debut at Chambord in 1670, when the protagonist, the parvenu M. Jourdain, is ridiculed for his desire to emulate the élite in his clothes. Frivolous though such minute concerns might seem, the court fashions aided the growth of an industry in France. In 1672, the gossipy Mercure Galant commented on the importance of Versailles for disseminating the fashions to Paris and thence to the provinces. Middle-class women began shopping to keep up. “The most beautiful silk fabrics, made up in the best of taste, are used for their clothes . . . They must have elegant déshabillés and mantillas of every type and color ...To this are added earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, diamond buckles, a gold watch hanging from a clasp, a gold snuff box, a muff and a fan; this is on the outside!”5 wrote one despairing father in Montpellier. Fashions were illustrated in engravings, and also by dolls in wax, wood or porcelain, often so beautiful themselves that the Parisian précieuses made exhibitions of them. So important did these dolls become to the French clothing economy that by the eighteenth century they were granted diplomatic immunity in order to travel and advertise abroad. As well as originating many of the fashions, Athénaïs also acted as a model for the finest work French couturiers could produce. Whatever she wore was discussed, copied and purchased, and her taste was a central part of the culture that was so influentially spread from Versailles.

  “Versailles” is often seen as synonymous with the court of Louis XIV, yet the long period of Louis’s residence there sometimes disguises the fact that it did not become the permanent location of the court until 1682. Until this date, the King continued his peripatetic existence to a great extent, moving between the Louvre, St. Germain, Fontainebleau, Chambord, Vincennes and Versailles, partly to avoid the inconveniences of the building works continually in progress in the palaces, and partly to accommodate his love of hunting. Between 1672 and 1678, owing to the Dutch wars, a large proportion of the male courtiers were also absent in the spring. Nevertheless, Louis’s great love for Versailles led him to spend as much time as possible there, and many of the customs and rituals that later gave the palace its stately, balletic character were inaugurated in the 1670s. Louis announced the permanent move in 1677, although five more years of furious building were needed before the relocation could take place.

  Athénaïs de Montespan does not really belong to the glacial, mechanical Versailles of the latter half of Louis’s reign, when Europe could set its watches by the King of France’s breakfast time, but to a lighter, more spontaneous period when courtiers who had danced all night in unimaginably sumptuous rooms squabbled over the privilege of a corner of a tiny, freezing garret to sleep in. The accommodation could be so haphazard that many ar
istocrats began to build their own homes at Versailles, encouraged by the King’s grant of free land in the new town in 1671 — Louvois had a house there, as did the Ducs de Guise, d’Aumont, de Noailles, de Créqui and de Luxembourg — and the appearance of Louis’s father’s old hunting park changed daily, though as ever, the King made sure he had architectural control over the buildings. Versailles in the 1670s, then, was a kaleidoscope palace, its vistas changing as often as the scenes of a theater set. The bedroom one slept in on one visit might not be there the next, it was easy to get lost, and one was as likely to glimpse the King returning from inspecting his gardens with mud on the royal boots as holding court in his robes of state.

  While some of Versailles’s most famous rooms, such as the Galérie des Glaces and the Salon de la Guerre, were not begun until 1678, Louis was able to occupy his own apartments, where much of the court ceremonial took place, from 1673. Their interior décor was inspired by the style developed by Le Brun and perfected in the Gallery of Apollo he decorated at the Louvre in 1663. The scheme, which originally encompassed much of the palace but which may now only be seen, much diminished, in the state apartments of the King and Queen, was based upon ceilings of ornamental stuccos integrated with painted panels on a larger, richer and more imposing scale than anything that had been attempted before. Mythological spectators seemed to gaze down upon the visitor, leaning on trompe l’oeil balustrades, an effect designed by Veronese for the Villa Maser in Italy. The walls were decorated with panels or tapestries from the royal collections, some, such as the Salon de Vénus, covered with designs of colored marbles repeated in the floors.