The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon
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Sixteen: La Vie en Bleu
“the redoubtable monster”: Letter from the Bishop of Uzès to Louis XIV, quoted in Garrison, Janine, L’Édict de Nantes et sa révocation (Paris: Seuil, 1985), 146.
“600 people have converted”: Journal entry for April 18, 1685 of Nicolas Foucault, quoted in Garrisson, 219. And see passim, chapter 6.
“We have just read”: Response to Louvois’s dispatch of March 1685, quoted in Garrisson, 220.
“With methods like these”: Letter from Fénelon to Bossuet of March 8, 1686, quoted in Richardt, Aimé, Fénelon (Paris: Éditions In Fine, 1993), 59.
“Let the truth reign”: Quoted in Richardt, Louvois, 206.
“You’ll no doubt have seen”: Letter to the comte de Bussy-Rabutin, October 28, 1685, in Sévigné, Marie, marquise de, Lettres, 3 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1960), III, 113.
“The dragoons were mounted”: Historian Pierre Miquel, quoted in Richardt, Louvois, 195.
“Several people in this town”: Quoted in Garrisson, 216.
“This day was read”: Evelyn, John, The Diary (London: Macmillan, 1908), November 3, 1685; March 29 & April 25, 1686, 384, 389–90.
“They compliment the King”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, May 13, 1700, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 273.
“Don’t be harsh”: Letter to Mr d’Aubigné, September 27, 1672, in Madame de Maintenon, Lettres, ed. Langlois, Marcel, Vols II–V (Paris: Letouzy et Ané, 1935–59), II, no. 25, 65.
“I admit I’m not very happy”: Letter to M. de Villette, September 4, 1687, in Correspondence générale de Madame de Maintenon, ed. Lavallée, Théophile, 4 vols (Paris: Charpentier, 1857), III, 3e partie (suite), no. CX, 91.
“no good reason”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, suivi de Réflexions sur le métier de Roi (Paris: Tallandier, 2001), 75–7.
“Monsieur Louvois was afraid”: Caylus, Marthe-Marguerite, comtesse de, Souvenirs, Bernard Noël (Paris: Mercure de France, 1965 et 1986), 28–9. Saint-Simon is quoted in Richardt, Louvois, 193.
“It was a most admirable project”: Quoted in Dunlop, Royal Palaces of France, 234–5.
“These new converts”: Quoted in Dunlop, Louis XIV (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999), 277.
“If things were in the same state”: Réponse a un mémoire touchant la manière la plus convenable de travailler à la conversion des Huguenots, in Maintenon, Comment la sagesse vient aux filles, 201–6. The réponse is generally dated 1697, though this date is not certain.
“A girl should recoil from worldly knowledge”: Quoted in Lewis, 245.
“Nothing good in this world”: Letter to the comte de Bussy-Rabutin, July 20, 1679, in Sévigné II, no. 574, 434.
“a little tumour”: Vallot et al., 167.
“and I won’t be happy”: Letters to Mme de Brinon, February 27 & April 12, 1686, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), no. LII, 9; & no. LVI, 16.
“on the same footing”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, August 2, 1688, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 117.
“This slimming business”: Letter to the Raugrave Amélie-Élisabeth, March 30, 1704, in ibid., 329.
“Bourdaloue is a famous Jesuit”: Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de, Mémoires, 7 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1953), I, 211.
“to see if talking”: Choisy, Abbé Françoise-Timoléon de, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV, et Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme, ed. Georges Mongrédien (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), 206.
“She does everything she can”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, August 11, 1686, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 103.
“You’re a nice face”: Letter to Madame de Grignan, July 22, 1685, in Sévigné III, no. 794, 94.
“Honestly, you’d cry laughing”: Letter to the Herzogin Sophie, August 11, 1686, & October 1, 1687, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Briefe, 77, 79–80.
“no physician and no astrologer”: Visconti, Primi, Mémoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV, 1673–1681 (Paris: Perrin, 1988), 53.
“Believe me when I say”: Letter to Mr d’Aubigny, December 15, 1679, in Langlois (ed.), Lettres II, no. 200, 323.
“insupportable martyrdom”: Letter to Madame de Grignan, March 1, 1680, in Sévigné II, no. 636, 629.
“a villainous commerce”: Spanheim, Ezechiel, Relation de la cour de France, faite au commencement de l’année 1690 (Paris: Renouard [pour la Société de l’histoire de France], 1882), 101.
“These vices are more”: Primi Visconti, quoted in Solnon, Jean-François, La Cour de France (Paris: Fayard, 1987), 286. And see Visconti, 13.
“You wouldn’t believe how blatant”: Letters to the Kurfürstin Sophie, February 6 & 13, 1695, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Briefe, 126–7. And see Lebrun, François, La vie conjugale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Armand Colin, 1978), 93.
“The King is just as angry”: Haymann, Lulli, 243.
“The praises of all Paris”: Ibid., 246–7.
“far from being able”: Chantelou, Paul Fréart de, Journal du Voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France, avec Préface de G. Charensol (Paris: Delamain et Boutelleau, 1930), 12. Reworked by Girardon, the statue was kept in the park at Versailles until it was damaged by vandals in 1980. A copy now stands outside the Louvre, while the repaired original remains in storage.
“He couldn’t bear anyone”: Spanheim, 7–8.
“It’s not pleasant”: Chamaillard, Edmond, Le Chevalier de Méré, rival de Voiture, ami de Pascal, précepteur de Madame de Maintenon (Niort: Clouzot, 1921), 1e partie, 54.
“Félix made two incisions”: Choisy, 253–4.
“Félix’s new instrument”: Entry for November 18, 1686, in Dangeau, Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de, Journal de la cour de Louis XIV, avec les additions inédites du duc de Saint-Simon, 19 vols (Paris: Firmin-Didot Frères, 1854–1860), I, 417–8.
“had tried to get in”: Choisy, 253.
“He was very jolly”: Dangeau I, December 6, 1686, 424.
“The King was in great pain”: Letter to Mme de Brinon, December 11, 1686, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), no. LXXIX, 49.
“He was in torments”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, December 11, 1686, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 107.
“The greatest man in Europe”: Pujo, Bernard, Le Grand Condé (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 385.
“The King’s wound”: Letter to Mme de Brinon, December 1686, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondence générale III, 3e partie (suite), no. LXXXII, 52–3.
“he hardly moved”: Solnon, 321.
“Last night, the King attended”: Letter to Mme de Brinon, December 25, 1686, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), no. LXXXIV, 54–5.
“His family weren’t at all”: Saint-Simon I, 39–40.
“He was unappealing”: Ibid. II, 672–3.
“I must say I prefer”: Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 265.
“she closed her eyes”: Saint-Simon II, 411.
“You’ve never seen”: Ibid.
“It was constant delight”: Choisy, 193–4.
“Her husband didn’t notice”: Saint-Simon II, 411.
“in words fit to be engraved”: Choisy, 194.
“Boufflers was devoted”: Saint-Simon III, 178, 182.
“I got upset sometimes”: Quoted in Langlois, “Madame de Maintenon,” in Revue Historique, 298.
“So being her adoptive nephew”: Choisy, 194.
“I am most impatient”: Letter to M. le comte de Caylus, December 21, 1686, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite) no. LXXXI, 51–2.
“He has to make things up”: Letter to M. de Villette, August 2, 1687, in ibid., no. CVI, 85–6.
“Do please send me”: Letter to Mme la marquise de Caylus, August 30, 1687, in ibid., no. CIX, 89–90.
“I’ll send my coach”: Letter to M. de
Villette, August 19, 1687, in ibid., no. CVIII, 87–9.
“He was perfectly happy”: Saint-Simon II, 411.
“you can imagine”: Caylus, 107.
Seventeen: Crusaders
“screaming and yelling”: See Oman, Carola, Mary of Modena (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962), 20.
“That flight will make”: Letter to Mme de Grignan, December 13, 1688, in Sévigné, Marie, marquise de, Lettres, 3 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1960), III, no. 891, 275. Madame de Sévigné describes the details of Queen Mary’s flight in a further letter to her daughter of December 24, 1688. See ibid., no. 899, 287–9. King James’s separate progress to France is described in the subsequent letters.
William and Mary: Mary II died in 1694. William III continued to reign alone until his death, in 1702. As they had no legitimate issue, they were succeeded by Mary’s sister, Anne (r. 1702–14).
“And today it really is”: Letter to the comte de Bussy-Rabutin, January 6, 1689, in Sévigné III, no. 905, 305–6.
“but she was intelligent”: Caylus, Marthe-Marguerite, comtesse de, Souvenirs, ed. Bernard Noël (Paris: Mercure de France, 1965 et 1986), 105.
“You could say she had”: Letter of June 15, 1718, quoted in ibid., 198.
“Off he’d go to the chase”: La Fayette, Madame de, Mémoires de la cour de France, pour les années 1688 et 1689, nouvelle édition (Paris: GALIC, 1962), 64–5.
“The King possesses”: Spanheim, Ezechiel, Relation de la cour de France, faite au commencement de l’année 1690 (Paris: Renouard [pour la Société de l’histoire de France], 1882), 7.
“The more you see”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, September 13, 1690, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 138–9.
“almost all the grandees”: La Fayette, 65.
“Every last plan”: Caylus, 105.
“Le millord Tyrconnell”: Letter to M. l’abbé Gobelin, February 14, 1689, in Correspondance générale de Madame de Maintenon, ed. Lavallée, Théophile, 4 vols (Paris: Charpentier, 1857), III, 3e partie (suite), 170–1. The Irish uprising of 1689, led by Richard Talbot, first Earl of Tyrconnell, followed Jacobite rebellions in the Scottish Highlands. The Irish Jacobites finally conceded defeat in October 1691 at the Treaty of Limerick.
“poorly disciplined”: La Fayette, 66.
“and officers of an exceedingly mediocre”: La Fayette, 72.
“the onset of a war”: Davies, Norman, Europe: A History (Oxford: OUP, 1997), 632. The Battle of Culloden Moor, which preceded the Highland clearances, was the last battle to be fought on British soil.
“From a mixture of all kinds”: Daniel Defoe, The True Born Englishman (1701), ll. 279–80, 317–21, 333–4. Defoe wrote the poem in response to William Tutchin’s The Foreigners: a Poem (1700), an attack on William III’s foreign birth.
absolute sovereign: By contrast, most countries of the West today base their parliaments on the later doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, drawn from the eighteenth-century models of revolutionary France or the United States, with “a formal constitution governing all branches of the polity.” See Davies, Europe, 631.
“I wept twice twenty-four hours”: Letter to the Herzogin Sophie, November 10, 1688, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Briefe, 88–9.
“The King has given orders”: Dangeau, Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de, Journal de la cour de Louis XIV, avec les additions inédites du duc de Saint-Simon, 19 vols (Paris: Firmin-Didot Frères, 1854–1860), II, November 26, 1688, 218.
“What distresses me”: Letter to the Herzogin Sophie, March 20, 1689, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Briefe, 90–1.
“Monseigneur’s army”: Letter to Madame de Maintenon, July 24, 1689, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), 183–4. Monseigneur (the twenty-nine-year-old dauphin) held only honorific command of the armies in the Rhineland. They were in fact commanded by the Maréchal de Lorge.
“It’s the same thing”: Letters to Madame de Maintenon, May 22 to October 31, 1689, in ibid., nos CLXVI–CXCIII, 174–204.
“I’m thrilled, Madame”: Letters to Madame de Maintenon, July 3 to August 20, 1690, in ibid., nos CCXII–CCXXVI, 233–49.
“M. le Grand Prieur”: Dangeau III, July 19 and 20, 1690, 174.
“It’s the biggest war”: Quoted in Bluche, François, Louis XIV (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 626. Catholic Spain, outraged by Louis’s pseudo-legal seizures, known to the French as réunions, of several of her smaller territories during the 1680s, had joined the otherwise Protestant Grand Alliance in an attempt to restrain him now. Through the réunions, France had gained some 160 small territories on its northern and eastern borders, notably Strasbourg and Luxembourg, mostly at the expense of Spain. To arrange this, Louis had set up quasi-legal courts to enforce the supposed claims of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which had ended the Thirty Years War.
“The King augmented”: Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de, Mémoires, 7 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1953), I, 888.
“No one should be surprised”: Caylus, 105.
“As soon as you permit”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, suivi de Réflexions sur le métier de Roi (Paris: Tallandier, 2001), 259.
“the stupidest creatures”: Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 266.
“There’s no other school”: Ibid., 269.
“Our maxim here”: Ibid., 265–70.
“If they won’t sit still”: Ibid., 269.
“The best-laid plans”: La Fayette, 67.
“Is it true you’re”: D’Aumale, Marie-Jeanne, Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon: Mémoire et lettres inédites de mademoiselle d’Aumale, 2e ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1902), 97–8.
“a book to divert him”: Letter from Françoise to Madame de Brinon, quoted in Desprat, 280.
“We must rebuild”: Ibid., 282.
“miseries and pettiness”: Ibid., 282.
“I take communion only”: See Letter XLVII, Sur les découragemens de la Dirigée, in Godet des Marais, Paul, Lettres de messire Paul Godet Des Marais, Évêque de Chartres, à Mme de Maintenon, recueillies par l’abbé Berthier (Paris: J. Dumoulin, 1980), 137–41.
“Your hope of salvation”: Ibid., 137–41. “O.L.J.C.”: Our Lord Jesus Christ.
“I was informed yesterday”: Letter XLIV, Sur la douleur, in ibid., 131–2.
“Sins just seem to get worse”: Letter to Mme de Brinon, July 21, 1686, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), no. LXX, 34.
“He was a man of quality”: Saint-Simon I, 256.
“He was a tall”: Ibid. IV, 606.
“I am sorry I didn’t know”: Letter of October 4, 1688, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), 117–18.
“No one needs to know”: Louis XIV, 35. Louis is here writing of the Jansenist controversy within the Catholic Church, but he maintained the same attitude towards other unorthodox movements.
“One gives oneself to God”: Choisy, Abbé François-Timoléon de, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV, et Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme, ed. Georges Mongrédien (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), 202–3.
“hiding in the attics”: Desprat, 299.
“I am hesitant to speak”: Letter of 1690, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale III, 3e partie (suite), 259–74.
“Madame de Maintenon wanted to clear”: Desprat, 309.
“develop doctrine and teach”: Ibid.
“Your Majesty’s ministers”: Paraphrased from Levi, Anthony, Louis XIV (London: Constable, 2004), 237–8.
“The archbishop of Paris”: Spanheim, 244–7.
What better cause: Letters to the Évêque de Châlons, August 13 & 18, 1695, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale IV, 3e partie (suite), nos CCCLIII & CCCLIV, 12.
“I would rather die”: Letter from Fénelon to Madame de Maintenon, September 1696, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale IV, 3e partie (suite), no. CDXXXII, 119.
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br /> “and to very bad effect”: Letter to M. l’Archévêque de Paris, August 7, 1698, in ibid., no. XXVII, 245.
“A lot of people at court”: Quoted in Desprat, 317.
“I have seen our friend”: Letter to M. l’Archévêque de Paris, October 7, 1696, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale IV, 3e partie (suite), no. CDXXXIV, 121.
“Why do you close your heart”: Letters of March 7 & September 1696, in ibid., nos CCCXCIV, 68 & CDXXXII, 118–20.
“If he’s right”: Saint-Simon I, 504. The speaker was Dom Jacques de la Cour, abbé de la Trappe.
“The King is watching me”: Letter to M. l’Archévêque de Paris, February 21 & April 3, 1697, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale IV, 3e partie (suite), nos CDL, 145–6 & CDLVI, 152. And see Desprat, 325.
“If he is condemned”: Letter to M. l’Archévêque de Paris, August 7, 1698, in ibid., 4e partie, no. XXVII, 245.
“In France, anyway”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, August 31, 1698, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 240.
“The King is getting angry”: Desprat, 320–4.
“The old hag isn’t the happiest”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, November 18, 1698, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 240.
“Pray for me”: Letter to M. l’Archévêque de Paris, September 3, 1698, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale IV, 4e partie, no. XXIX, 247.
“tenderness and loyalty”: Quoted in Desprat, 326.
“So, Madame”: Desprat, 326.
“There were so many men”: Saint-Simon I, 550–7.
“They won’t say whether”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, July 19, 1699, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 261.
“the life of a twenty-five-year-old”: Somerset, Anne, The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (London: Phoenix, 2004), 299.
“As far as I’m concerned”: Letter to the duchesse de Hanovre, August 10, 1691, in Liselotte von der Pfalz, Lettres de Madame, 144.
“I know better than anyone”: Letter from the duc du Maine to Madame de Maintenon, October 25, 1699, in Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance générale IV, 4e partie, no. LIX, 292–3.
“Madame de Maintenon was dreadfully upset”: Saint-Simon I, 678.