The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon

by Veronica Buckley

  Françoise, less frivolous by nature than Athénaïs, or perhaps less desperate for the King’s love, had made no visits to fortune-tellers and bought no doubtful love potions. She had begun this “year of terror” at court with a promotion to the post of deuxième dame d’atour (second lady-in-waiting) to the Princess Marie-Anne of Bavaria, newly bethrothed to the nineteen-year-old dauphin, and in fact yet to arrive at the French court. Mignon and his brothers were now of an age to leave the care of their governess for the stricter supervision of a male tutor, and Athénaïs’s youngest children had been sent away to Paris, to the house in the rue Vaugirard that had once been Françoise’s own, to be cared for there by other nurses and governesses.

  In consquence, Françoise had been briefly without a post at all, until the King had pronounced her dame d’atour, which justified her presence at court, and at the same time brought them more often together. It was possibly Françoise rather than Louis who had felt the need of some new public justification for her presence, for it was apparently in this month of January 1680 that she resumed her affair with him, reclaiming him from the vapid Angélique de Fontanges, who was by now in any case quite unwell. She had endured serious haemorrhaging following the birth, and swift death, of a baby fathered by Louis—“wounded On His Majesty’s Service,” as Madame de Sévigné remarked.

  Prodded by her conscience, perhaps, Françoise took advantage of her renewed influence over the King to nudge him a little closer to the neglected Marie-Thérèse, with the result that by the end of May, in an astonishing turnabout, Françoise was much loved by the King, highly esteemed by the Queen, and absolutely detested by Athénaïs. By the summer, Françoise was away at the southern spas with Mignon. By the autumn, she had returned to court, to general, glowing praise, and Athénaïs had begun to topple from her pedestal at last.

  The Chambre d’Arsenal had been disbanded in October, though it was to resume in the spring of 1681 and continue for more than a year. No one but La Reynie had much faith in it by now. “[P]eople viewed [it] as a private court for two or three people to carry out their personal vendettas,” wrote Primi Visconti. Jean de La Fontaine recorded his opinion for posterity in one of his already beloved fables:

  It’s all prejudice, intrigue, favouritism,

  Nothing to do with justice, or next to nothing.

  In less than two years of existence, the Chambre would investigate 442 people, arrest 218, imprison 65 for life, condemn 36 to be hanged or burnt alive or broken on the wheel, send scores to the galleys, and torture one woman to death. For all that, “[t]hey never found so much as a malicious thought against the King.” Some professional criminals had certainly been involved in the affair—black masses, for example, or sticking pins in wax dolls, appeared to be the prerogative of specialists—but much of it was no more than a superstitious outgrowth of the quasi-magical religious beliefs of the day. More or less everyone believed that spirits walked the earth, that the devil could be conjured, that a prayer could be distorted into a curse, and that the curse would work.

  The rest was a question of entrenched, if ugly, social norms: violent acts of revenge or desperation, abandonment and killing of babies, abortions procured with dangerous potions or dirty metal tools. As to the last, so many had been discovered among both ordinary women and ladies of rank that Louis called a halt to all further investigations. Abortion was a particular problem in France, noted Primi Visconti, “whether it’s because of the climate, or because the husbands are all away at the wars, and the young girls fall in love so quickly…[but] the King didn’t want to press this matter any further, given that the whole kingdom was infested with the practice.”

  Though many innocent people suffered, some did benefit in the end from the changes brought about by “l’affaire des poisons.” Some genuine criminals, hired blades and dispatchers of unwanted babies, were swept off the streets for good. New laws regulating the sale of toxic substances left Parisians safer than they had been before. And in a definite public health advance, apothecaries were thenceforth barred from making medicines out of toads and snakes.

  Françoise recorded nothing of what she thought of the whole poisons affair, or if she did, she was careful to destroy it later. But it settled her fate as surely as it settled that of the misérables forced into exile, or to prison, or to the stake. Athénaïs’s involvement, whether criminal or not, had finally debased her bright gold coin for good. It had cost her the King’s trust, and with it his esteem and, in the end, even his passion for her. Louis had been stricken by the sordid and scandalous revelations as by a final, shocking insult after years of lesser injuries inflicted through Athénaïs’s pride and greed. Françoise, by contrast, seemed a tranquil haven after the storm, discreet, undemanding, above suspicion, with no taste whatsoever for the foolish superstitions which had tainted almost every other lady at court. Besides, of all Louis’s available mistresses, she was probably the only one “incapable of abusing her closeness to the master.”

  Athénaïs’s loss was Françoise’s fabulous gain, and though the King privately rebuked his impertinent courtiers, he did not contradict their witty acknowledgement of her new standing: by the end of 1680, the humble Widow Scarron had been gloriously transformed into the lady of the moment, Madame de Maintenant.

  Part Two

  Thirteen

  Madame de Maintenant

  No Spring, nor Summer beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one Autumnall face.

  In the month of November 1680, Françoise turned a mellow forty-five, “still attractive in her person,” as the abbé de Choisy confirmed. Louis, handsome and vigorous, was now forty-two, and his solid sister-in-law Liselotte just twenty-eight, the contrasts a source of indignation to her, keenly resenting as she did the King’s evident preference for “the old Maintenon woman” over her much younger, hearty dumpling self.

  Liselotte was in love with the King, but even those immune to his charms were puzzled by his choice. “No one knew what to think of it,” wrote Primi Visconti, “because Madame de Maintenon was old. Some thought she was the King’s confidante, some that she was just a servant, and some supposed the King had chosen her, as a clever person, to write a memoir of his reign…Lots of people pointed out that some men are actually more attracted sensually to old women than to young ones.”

  The worldly chevalier de Méré, so warm an admirer of Françoise in the springtime days of her girlhood, might have had a pertinent word or two to say, had anyone thought to consult him at his quiet estate in Poitou: “The most beautiful women are more dangerous than ever once their youth is behind them,” he had written. “If they have lost in one respect, they have gained in another, and what they have gained—in grace or in accomplishments—makes them loved even more.” Forty-year-old Athénaïs, outraged and still scheming, may have recognized, in the poised and undemanding Françoise, the respite that Louis needed after her emotionally extravagant self. As the abbé de Choisy observed, “Madame de Maintenon was good-natured and obliging, whereas the King never could stand up to Madame de Montespan in person.” But it was Madame de Sévigné in Paris, with the advantage of detachment from the daily life of the court, who probably came closest to divining the truth: “She has shown him a new country which he has never known before—normal friendship and conversation, without constraint or pretence, and he’s charmed by it…[Madame de Montespan] is terribly jealous of the trust and friendliness between them…You can defeat passion, but against intelligence and conversation…”

  “The King doesn’t like to see a man so much in love that he’s a slave to his passion,” wrote Primi Visconti. Louis was sensually drawn to Françoise—indeed, he seemed devoted to her: “He gives her more care and attention than she receives from any of her other friends,” wrote Madame de Sévigné. But Louis was confident nonetheless that he had, and could retain, the upper hand in their relationship. With Françoise, there would be no scenes, no demands, and no challenges to his authority. She was, as the abbé de Choisy ha
d said, “good-natured and obliging,” though neither Louis nor the abbé suspected the tactic behind this continual complaisance. As Françoise confessed to her secretary many years later, “I’m naturally impatient, but the King never suspected it, though I was often at the end of my tether…I’m naturally frank, and in the early years of my favour, I was always having to pretend to agree with him. At times I’d be upset…but I never said the least word to show it. Sometimes I was really angry…God alone knows what I suffered…But the King would come into my room, and there would be no sign of any problem. I would pretend to be in a good mood. I put all my effort into entertaining him, to keep him away from women, and I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been always obliging and good-tempered. He would have looked for his pleasure elsewhere, if he hadn’t found it with me.”

  Françoise’s self-control, so marked a contrast with Athénaïs’s unpredictable moods, ensured the King a relaxed and pleasant environment, and bound him ever closer to her. She well understood the attraction for him of her oasis of calm amid the constant demands of court and state, but if there was calculation in her determined mastery of her impatience and frankness and even anger, there was a measure of instinct, too. Françoise wanted first place in the King’s affections, but not, as Athénaïs had done, in order to play the sultane at court, nor even, like so many others, to garner what money and prestige she could from a more fleeting liaison. Françoise wanted Louis to love her, and her need for his love was profound. Many friends were fond of her; many men had desired her; Scarron had loved her, in his half-fulfilled, circumvented way; the marquis de Villarceaux had loved her, perhaps, but not for long, and not exclusively. Neither mother nor father had given her a sound emotional sense of herself, and from her stable life at Mursay she had been wrenched into a situation of hardship and humiliation. Françoise needed love, and respect, and security. Louis, it seemed, could provide them all.

  From her own point of view, it was hardly a difficult bargain. She was physically drawn to him, flattered by his attentions, fed and clothed by the pension he had awarded her. He was the King, and if he strayed among pretty maids-in-waiting, if he could be autocratic and even selfish, his presence and his favour were compensation enough. From being in love with a handsome prince, from accepting his fluctuating attentions, Françoise had progressed easily to wanting him exclusively for herself, not sexually, perhaps—this seemed impossible—but in deeper emotional terms. And in her apparently steady and undemanding self, she provided the same emotional constancy for him—the uncertain little boy-King, worshipped, ignored, coerced, overruled, and diplomatically traded into a morbid marriage, played upon endlessly by subtler minds, both male and female—now a King nearing the pinnacle of his reign, but still at times uncertain, shielding himself from his own doubts with an attitude of firmness, even inflexibility.

  So Françoise kept her dissatisfactions to herself, and whatever it may have cost her, the pretence worked. While Athénaïs fumed and Liselotte wept her big, neglected tears, it became ever more clear that Louis simply could not do without his Madame de Maintenant. “His Majesty often spends two hours of an afternoon in her room, chatting with an ease and friendliness which makes it the most desirable place in the world.” So Madame de Sévigné conveyed the news to her daughter in Provence. “The other day the King spent three hours with her—she had migraine…The King spends only a few moments with Madame de Montespan…Madame de Maintenon’s favour grows higher and higher, and Madame de Montespan’s diminishes even as you watch.”

  Though now “old,” or at least in middle age, Françoise remained a beauty, her skin firm and fresh, her figure fuller and more voluptuous, without the heaviness which so bedevilled Athénaïs, her chestnut hair showing no streak of grey, and her eyes, “the most beautiful eyes in the world,” still glowing with warmth and sparkling with intelligence. Though the King’s desire for her was still strong, by now she felt confident enough to refuse to sleep with him when she did not want to. “Not all the ladies responded to the King as he wished,” observed Ezechiel Spanheim approvingly. “They didn’t want to ruin their virtue, or their chance of a good marriage…As for Madame de Maintenon,” he continued, with only partial truth, “this was primarily a friendly and trusting intercourse, and a particular esteem for the lady, rather than the effect of any more tender passion which her charms might inspire, if she or the King were of a more appropriate age…Her father was mixed up in some bad things,” Spanheim added. “He took her to live in Canada, in America.”

  If Louis had his own frustrations to endure, at least Queen Marie-Thérèse was happy. For the first time in many years, she was receiving “a kind of attention and consideration and tenderness that she was by no means used to, and it made her happier than she had ever been. Moved to tears, she would exclaim, in a sorry transport of joy, God has sent Madame de Maintenon to give the King’s heart back to me! Never quick on the uptake, Marie-Thérèse evidently did not see that her apparent benefactress was also serving, at least occasionally, as her husband’s mistress, nor did she realize that Françoise’s real aim was not “to give the King’s heart back to [her],” but to keep it away from Athénaïs, and—perhaps—in the end, to secure it for herself.

  “Perhaps” to secure the King’s heart for herself—it is as much as can be said with any certainty. After eight years of living at court, close to the King, Françoise was by now, beyond any doubt, of central importance to him. She was his favourite mistress; it was with her that he spent the greatest part of his leisure hours, in amicable conversation, if not in lovemaking. The abbé de Choisy felt that she allowed him “to relax from the cares of state,” but it seems, too, that she had also begun to use these private hours with the King to persuade him to her own way of thinking, and in so doing, to further her own interests. She had already been promoting her preferred physician, Guy-Crescent Fagon; in time she would manoeuvre him into the post of personal physician to the King. For the marquis de Montchevreuil, her loyal friend from the Marais days, she had arranged the position of governor to the now ten-year-old duc du Maine, her Mignon. “I’ve told [your manservant] that he could mention my name to Colbert whenever he needs anything,” she had written to her brother early in 1679; and in the summer of 1680: “I’ll speak to Monsieur Colbert…and you’ll be paid your salary.” Madame de Sévigné went so far as to say, at this time, that “Madame de Maintenon is the machine directing everything”—an exaggeration, no doubt, but a reflection all the same of her perceived influence at court.

  Yet even in moments of superoptimism, Françoise can hardly have believed that she would hold any lasting sway over the King. Louise de la Vallière in her bleak convent; Angélique de Fontanges in her early grave; Athénaïs, with her six royal children, in the mortification of her unvisited apartments; the Queen herself, in her pathetic dependence on the crumbs from a servant’s table; and a host of lesser mortals who had pleased the King for a year or a day—all gave warning of the transience of his affections, indeed of the transience of all the glories of the earth.

  What use to Louise was her beauty now, what use Angélique’s coach and eight grey horses? What use was even a crown to Marie-Thérèse, the laughing-stock of every chambermaid who served her? Françoise, with intelligence to burn, saw only too clearly the eventual writing on her own silk-covered wall. It was this which in earlier days had made her draw back from the King’s embrace, and it was this which now persuaded her that to be his mistress, or his confidante or even his counselor, was not enough—either for her or, so she persuaded herself, for him. For the moment, she had the upper hand, as Louise and Athénaïs and others had had before her. She was like them, it was true, but she was different, too. Where they had relied on their hold on Louis’s heart, she would forge a stronger bond with him, a bond that would ensure a lasting, indeed an everlasting glory, for him and also for herself. She was not going to be counted as just one more royal mistress. Her goal was far, far higher. Françoise had decided to save the
King’s soul.

  The decision did not reflect any genuine new-found piety on her part. Rather, it revealed her need for a serious aim in life, and no doubt, too, a tactical accommodation to the increasingly dévot tone of the times, with its accompanying elevation of her own public reputation. The new plan revealed as well Françoise’s understanding of the King’s own rather simple religious sense: for Louis, the public conventions were to be observed; the private requirements were to be striven for; the Lord was to be feared, though sin could be forgiven if repentance were sincere; salvation, achievable only through the Catholic Church, was the ultimate goal of every person in the land. Louis certainly expected salvation, though since his first manhood, his appetite for illicit sex had kept him in a near-constant state of potentially damning sin; of this he was perfectly, and sometimes anxiously, aware. But where the champion preacher Bossuet had failed, after years of threats and thundering sermons, Françoise intended to succeed. From now on, her work would be to draw Louis away from the sinful sexual liaisons that were endangering his immortal soul, and send him back to the bed of his legal wife.

  By the late summer of 1681, she was confident of at least a temporary success, and conveyed as much to her cousin Philippe at Mursay. “The King has no galanteries now,” she told him, “and you can say so, without fear of appearing badly informed.” There remained, all the same, the question of her own relationship with Louis. Was not this itself a galanterie? Ironically, suspicion of herself continued to be deflected by Athénaïs, still officially maîtresse déclarée, so that, as Louis had intended, the courtiers remained unsure of what was happening in the vital realm of the King’s amours. But Françoise knew the truth, and her equivocal responses to Louis’s expectations of sex—supposedly refused for reasons of piety—reveal her compromised conscience.