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

by Hilton, Lisa

  The Comtesse de Soissons’s younger sister Marie Mancini, Louis’s first love, had threatened to reappear at court in 1672, on fleeing her unhappy marriage to an Italian prince. Athénaïs knew that Marie was a clever and spirited woman, and that she was certain to try for a reconciliation by playing on Louis’s sentimental memories. This time with the approval of the Queen, Athénaïs refused outright to countenance her presence at court. Marie defiantly took up residence at Lys, near Fontainebleau, but Athénaïs succeeded in having her removed to a safer distance. Marie knew when she had met her match, and wisely departed into a compromising asylum with the Duc de Savoie.

  Yet the chambre des filles was a veritable hydra, and as soon as one pretty head was cut off, another sprang up in its place.1 However insouciant she appeared, Athénaïs suffered constantly, torn between hope that the latest lover was merely a caprice and fear that this time the King’s heart might escape her. And for a time, before and after the religious crisis of 1675, it seemed that Mme. de Sévigné’s red-haired friend the Princesse de Soubise might prove more than a passing royal fancy. “Everybody thinks that the King is no longer in love, and that Mme. de Montespan is torn between the consequences that might follow the return of his favors, and the danger of their not doing so, and the fear that he might turn elsewhere,” declared La Sévigné.2

  Athénaïs tried to disgust Louis by hinting that La Soubise was scrofulous, like a beautiful apple rotten inside, but this did not prevent Louis from checking for himself, and La Soubise’s son, Armand-Gaston, the Cardinal de Rohan, conceived in 1674 when Athénaïs was heavily pregnant with Mlle. de Nantes, was so much a Bourbon that there was little doubt as to his paternity. Eventually, though, La Soubise overreached herself, and fell into disgrace, as we saw in the previous chapter.

  The Soubise skirmish was well won by the time Mme. de Ludres appeared in the King’s orbit, and no doubt Athénaïs was sanguine that she could see off this challenge as she had done so many others. Publicly, she appeared confident. “The other day, at play, Quanto had her head resting, with all familiarity, on the shoulder of her friend [Louis], one believed this affectation was to announce, ‘I am better off than ever.’” La Ludres, though, seemed ready to match the favorite’s cunning. Just as Athénaïs had done in the 1660s, she piqued Louis’s interest by maintaining a circle of suitors (which included Athénaïs’s brother Vivonne) while keeping herself chaste, angling after a bigger prize. Once again, Athénaïs retaliated by putting about a spiteful rumor: that La Ludres suffered periodically from revolting outbreaks of eczema. But Louis seemed as unconcerned about this as he had been with La Soubise’s purported ailments, and by 1677, Mme. de Sévigné’s country correspondent Bussy-Rabutin was commenting openly on the new affair, which was confirmed by a poem circulating in Paris.

  La Vallière était du commun,

  La Montespan était de la noblesse

  La Ludres était chanoinesse.

  Toutes trois ne sont que pour un:

  C’est le plus grand de potentats

  Qui veut assembler les Etats.3

  Athénaïs and Isabelle were now openly at war, each assembling a campful of friends who cut each other in public and sniped viciously in private. Mme. de Thianges was particularly obvious in her defense of her sister, going so far as to strike the new mistress on meeting her and giving her murderous glares when etiquette kept them apart.

  A more surprising ally was Mme. de Maintenon. While the engagement of the governess had proved to be a great tactical error on Athénaïs’s part, as the war of the King’s conscience had shown, the two women were quick to bury their differences when the King was besieged by an outsider. Athénaïs was in the last months of pregnancy, not the best time to press home her advantage with the King, and accepted an invitation to stay at Mme. de Maintenon’s country estate. Here Athénaïs gave birth to her sixth child by the King, Mlle. de Blois, on 4 April. La Maintenon’s magnanimity did not extend to caring for the little girl, the fruit of the sin the governess had tried so earnestly to prevent: both she and her brother the Comte de Toulouse, born the next year, were consigned instead to the care of Mme. Colbert, assisted by a Mme. de Jussac.

  Meanwhile, Isabelle de Ludres had been profiting by the favorite’s absence and insinuating herself with the ladies of the court, who began to show her the same respect they had reserved for Athénaïs, rising in her presence even before the Queen, and sitting down only when she gave the sign. It was this gesture that alerted Marie-Thérèse to the fact that her husband had gone astray yet again, but she declared that she would take no action since, extraordinarily, “that is the affair of Mme. de Montespan.” La Ludres even went so far as to fake a pregnancy, convinced that a child would vanquish her rival.

  Sadly for Isabelle, she was not nearly as good a psychologist as Athénaïs. Louis’s pride would not suffer that he be preempted, and he was furious at the pretentious airs she put on when he had given her no encouragement to act as maîtresse en titre. Disgusted by her conceit, he cut her in public and in an instant the court followed suit. All that was accomplished was that he returned penitently to Athénaïs, who was delighted to forgive him, and came back to Versailles as though nothing had happened. Isabelle retreated to the country for a month, then recommenced her service in July. Her time in the sun had been very short. From queening it over the duchesses, she found herself reduced once more to one of Madame’s maids. The German princess, who kept her spiteful feelings about Athénaïs for her letters, was less intimidated by the cast-off girl, and remarked, as she played with a pair of compasses, “I ought to scratch out these eyes that have done so much damage!” Isabelle replied mournfully that she couldn’t care less, since her beautiful eyes had not secured what she wished for.

  La Ludres bore her shame proudly for a while, leaving the room with an absent air when the King appeared and ostentatiously turning her head away from the Queen at Mass. If she had lost all her power, she was determined at least to be respected but, like Louise de La Vallière, she found the daily contact with her victorious rival insupportable, and eventually expressed a desire to retreat to a convent in the Rue du Bac in Paris. There was nothing Louis loathed more than a long face, and he had forgotten his passion for her so completely that when her request was put to him he answered sardonically, “What? Is she still here?” If there was a warning in this, Athénaïs was not inclined to heed it.

  Quinault’s opera La Gloire de Niquée commemorated the love triangle of the year, transforming Isabelle de Ludres into Io, the nymph whose punishment for seducing Jupiter is metamorphosis into a miserable heifer, lowing her inarticulate grief at her abandonment. Although Athénaïs was furious, and everyone else highly amused, to find herself represented as the puffing jealous matriarch Juno rather than the delectable nymph, there was no doubt as to who came off better in the struggle for Jupiter/Louis’s affections. Mme. de Sévigné describes the return of “Juno triumphant” to Versailles rather critically: “What triumph at Versailles! What redoubled pride! What certain establishment! What Duchesse de Valentinois!4 ...What recovered possession! I spent an hour in this chamber, she was in bed, dressed, coiffed, she was resting for the medianoche . . . she found in herself all ‘the glory of Niquée,’ delivering her lines with great superiority over the poor Io, and laughing at those who had the audacity to complain of her. Imagine to yourself all that an ungenerous pride can do and say in triumph, and you will be close to it.” Despite this strong disapproval, the Marquise was forced to concede that Athénaïs was quite charming and gracious in her conversation with her.

  Mme. de Sévigné also expressed her astonishment that the attachment between Louis and Athénaïs seemed closer than ever; indeed, almost unearthly. As always, Louis spoke his love in gifts, and Athénaïs appeared so covered with diamonds that she seemed to the courtiers like “a brilliant divinity.” Her policy of not accepting jewelry made her extremely popular, because Louis circumvented it by organizing a discreet “lottery,” in which, for appear
ances’ sake, other ladies, too, could “win” jewels, decorated boxes, or Chinese vases. As ever, the couriers of Europe were kept gratifyingly busy relaying the latest munificence of the Sun King to his reine sultaine.

  Louis seemed more than ever bound to the sensuality of his mistress. He delighted in her body, in her languorous capacity for pleasure, in the efforts she made to constantly divert, surprise and please him. Even in pregnancy, Louis found her desirable, perhaps more so, as he loved superabundance in everything. It was just as well, for by September, Athénaïs was pregnant yet again. Even so, she went with the King when he departed for what would be the final campaign of the Dutch wars in February 1678. She suffered a good deal from fever on the creeping, freezing journey, but as usual kept her illness to herself, knowing Louis’s exigency on the subject. On Valentine’s Day, the royal party paused at Vitry-le-François, where the townspeople, in their finest clothes, presented Marie-Thérèse with a gift of sweet-meats and their second Queen with a decorated basket of ripe pears.

  This campaign represented the strenuous conclusion of six years of war that were to leave France triumphant as the dominant nation in Europe, but severely damaged financially as a consequence of the vast expenses incurred. After the French conquest of Franche-Comté in 1674, the outlook had been positive for Louis and for France, but the next year, the mood darkened. The Maréchal de Turenne was killed, and the Prince de Condé hung up his spurs and retired to Chantilly. Valenciennes was taken in 1677, by a force commanded by Louis and Monsieur, but the victory was soured for Louis by his jealousy of the popular reaction to his brother’s skill. When the brothers rode into Paris, Monsieur was received delightedly, with cries of “Vive le Roi et Monsieur qui a gagné la bataille,” the use of the singular implying that it was Monsieur, not Louis, who had won the battle. Needless to say, Monsieur was never allowed to set a dainty, high-heeled foot on a battlefield again. Following the Siege of Ghent, the conflict ended with the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. Louis renounced some of his conquests, but retained twelve towns which were to be refortified. He also succeeded in retaining control of the Franche-Comté region. Holland, meanwhile, received a favorable trade agreement, but no monetary compensation.

  In the provinces, however, the consequences of high taxes and neglected agriculture were already being felt. The Duc de Lésdiguières described a typical situation in a letter to Colbert: “I cannot put off making known to you the misery to which I see this province reduced, commerce here has ceased absolutely, and from everywhere people come to beg me to make known to the King how impossible it is for them to pay the taxes. It is certain ...that the greatest part of the inhabitants of the said province have lived during the winter on only black bread and roots, and that, presently, one sees them eating the grass in the fields and the bark on the trees.”5 It was a long way from Louis’s glamorous warmongering “in lace and feathers.”

  Athénaïs made her only venture into public politics during the last stages of the war. Rather sweetly, she declared that she was moved by the sufferings of the French people, which she had seen as she followed so many campaigns, and that she wanted to be part of the final effort to gain victory for her ailing country. With the help of Colbert’s son Seignelay, she selected a ship, Le Comté, which she equipped and manned, from her own private funds, with 200 officers and sailors, mostly recruited from her ancestral estate of Tonnay-Charente, under the command of Captain Louis de la Motte-Grenouille. Colbert’s correspondence emphasizes that Le Comté’s expenses were to be kept separate from those of the rest of the King’s fleet, since it was a private enterprise. It was typical of Athénaïs’s vanity that she chose such a magnificent, showy way to declare her support for the cause, and in fact Le Comté never sailed to war as the Peace of Nijmegen intervened. But it was a bold gesture, and in keeping with the Rochechouart connection with the sea. Of course, such patriotism would also have found approval with Louis, so perhaps Athénaïs’s motives, which were never dissociated from her need to please the King, were not entirely altruistic.

  Athénaïs’s brother Vivonne was involved in the war as admiral of the fleet when the Sicilians, who had formerly been controlled by the Spanish, rose against their overlords with the assistance of the French. Vivonne governed the island for a while, but when the peace treaty was signed it was considered that the presence of French troops in Sicily was prejudicial to the settlement, and he returned to France in 1678.

  Despite the strains of the war, the French mood after the Peace of Nijmegen was euphoric, and Louis’s popularity reached a height it would never again attain. The birth of another healthy son, Louis-Alexandre, Comte de Toulouse, to Athénaïs at Clagny on 6 June seemed to bestow the final blessing on the apparently semidivine lovers. The year 1678 was perhaps the zenith of the reign, the apogee of the “Age Montespan”: Louis appeared invincible; his mistress “stood forth in the full blaze of her shameless glory.”6 Nothing was too good for Athénaïs, and if Louis denied her any political influence, he denied her nothing else. She was the perfect complement to the military might he had established, and “her spirit, her culture, her intellectual and worldly influence must have attracted a great deal of regard to the King.”7 Her train was carried by the Duc de Noailles, a peer of France, while the Queen had to make do with a mere page. Her suite, her toilettes, her soirées were all of a royal magnificence that far outstripped her 6,000-livre salary as a nominal lady-in-waiting. She received a further 150,000 livres from the King for the care and education of their children, but to assist with her own expenses, including those streams of gold that tumbled nightly on to the gambling table, she was given permission to draw on the privy purse.

  More than ever, Marie-Thérèse was marginalized among her priests while Louis spent the best part of his time with Athénaïs, dining with her and their older children, and even conducting meetings with his ministers in her rooms. Humiliated, the Queen was famously heard to remark, “This whore will kill me.” Although it can hardly be claimed that Athénaïs spared the Queen’s feelings, the numerous historians who resent the significance of Athénaïs’s role in the greatest court France has ever known seem reluctant to acknowledge that she did perform several practical kind acts for the Queen. For example, when one of Marie-Thérèse’s beloved Spanish waiting women involved herself in a foolish correspondence with the court of her native country, at that time allied with Holland against France, Louis furiously declared that he would send the maid away. The Queen begged Athénaïs to intercede to change his mind. The maid was permitted to remain, and Mme. de Sévigné records that the Queen was overjoyed “and declares that she will never forget the obligation under which Mme. de Montespan has placed her.”

  The degree of respect in which Athénaïs was held by the entire court was demonstrated by the sensation of the New Year gifts she received in 1679. Marie-Thérèse and all her ladies-in-waiting produced presents, but the most magnificent was Monsieur’s, who defied his wife in favor of his old friendship for Athénaïs, which dated from her début at the Louvre. He gave her a chiseled gold salver with a border of emeralds and diamonds and two golden goblets decorated in the same fashion. This sumptuous present was estimated by the sharp eyes of the court to be worth 10,000 ecus. From the Marquise de Maintenon, Athénaïs received a little emerald-encrusted book entitled Les Oeuvres de M. le Duc du Maine, a charming collection of letters purportedly written by her nine-year-old son, with a preface scripted by Racine. On the surface, the book was a costly and engaging mark of the respect of the governess for her mistress, suggesting that at this point, La Maintenon accorded with the general perception of Athénaïs as invulnerable, and thought it prudent to maintain some vestige of her former subservient position. But the contents of the book give a telling insight into the depths to which La Maintenon was prepared to stoop in her ongoing pursuit of the King’s soul, and it was to prove a most effective weapon.

  The general view of the strength of Athénaïs’s position was, however, misjudged, for it was i
n 1679 that the maîtresse en titre finally began to lose her hold over the King. The Ludres alliance had been disbanded as soon as poor Io mooed her way into obscurity, and the two marquises were once again at daggers drawn. Athénaïs was irritated at the way the governess used her relationship with the little Duc du Maine to make demands on Louis’s attention. All Athénaïs’s children by Louis were rather fragile (unlike her legitimate children, which is another indication of the weakness of the overbred Bourbon bloodline), but Du Maine gave cause for particular concern. Aged three, as the last of his milk teeth developed, he had suffered a debilitating fever that left him with one leg shorter than the other and a most pathetic limp. After various remedies had failed, Mme. de Main-tenon, under the pseudonym of Mme. de Surgères, took him for a cure at Anvers and then to Barèges in the Pyrenees, where a fistula which had developed on the little boy’s thigh was treated, and he returned in better health. Although in later life he proved, to his father’s great distress, to be a coward on the battlefield, he bore the various horrible treatments to which he was subjected, such as being stretched on a rack, with admirable courage. In 1676, the cure was successfully repeated, to the delight of his mother and aunts, Mme. de Thianges and the Abbesse de Fontrevault, who went to meet him on the road. Despite her pleasure in Du Maine’s recovery, Athénaïs was jealous and frustrated that she had not been permitted to accompany her son on this and subsequent visits.