Women Of Modern France Part 8

CHAPTER V

MISTRESSES AND WIVES OF LOUIS XIV

The story of the wives and mistresses of Louis XIV., embraces that which is most dramatic morally (or immorally dramatic) in the history of French women. The record of the eighteenth century heroines is essentially a tragic one, while that of those of the previous century is essentially dramatic in its sadness, remorse, and repentance.

The mistress, as a rule, was unhappy; there were few months during the period of her glory, in which she was entirely free from anxiety or in which her conscience was at rest. Mme. de Montespan "was for so many years the sick nurse of a soul worn out with pride, pa.s.sion, and glory." Mme. de Maintenon wrote to one of her friends: "Why cannot I give you my experience? Why cannot I make you comprehend the ennui which devours the great, and the troubles that fill their days? Do you not see that I am dying of sadness, in a fortune the vastness of which could not be easily imagined? I have been young and pretty; I have enjoyed pleasures; I have spent years in intellectual intercourse; I have attained favor; and I protest to you, my dear child, that all such conditions leave a frightful void." She said, also, to her brother, Count d'Aubigne: "I can hold out no longer; I would like to be dead." It was she too, who, after her successes, made her confession thus: "One atones heavily for the pleasures and intoxications of youth. I find, in looking back at my life, that since the age of twenty-two--which was the beginning of my fortune--I have not had a moment free from sufferings which have constantly increased."

M. Saint-Amand gives a description of the women of Louis XV. which well applies to those of his predecessor: "These pretended mistresses, who, in reality, are only slaves, seem to present themselves, one after the other, like humble penitents who come to make their apologies to history, and, like the primitive Christians, to reveal publicly the miseries, vexations, and remorses of their souls. They tell us to what their doleful successes amounted: even while their triumphal chariot made its way through a crowd of flatterers, their consciences hissed cruel accusations into their ears; like actresses before a whimsical and variable public, they were always afraid that the applause might change into an uproar, and it was with terror underlying their apparent coolness that they continued to play their sorry part.... If among these mistresses of the king there were a single one who had enjoyed her shameful triumphs in peace, who had called herself happy in the midst of her dearly bought luxury and splendor, one might have concluded that, from a merely human point of view, it is possible to find happiness in vice. But, no--there is not even one!" Ma.s.sillon, the great preacher of truth and morality, said: "The worm of conscience is not dead; it is only benumbed. The alienated reason presently returns, bringing with it bitter troubles, gloomy thoughts, and cruel anxieties"--a true picture of every mistress.

The remarkable power and influence of these women, the love and adoration accorded them, ceased with their death; the memory of them did not survive overnight. When, during a terrible storm, the remains of the glorious Mme. de Pompadour were being taken to Paris, the king, seeing the funeral cortege from his window, remarked: "The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey."

Each one of these powerful mistresses represents a complete epoch of society, morals, and customs. Mme. de Montespan--that woman whose very look meant fortune or disfavor--with all her wit and wealth, her magnificence and pomp and superb beauty--she, in all her splendor, is a type of the triumphant France, haughty, dictatorial, scornful and proud, licentious and decayed at the core. Voluptuousness and haughtiness were replaced by religiosity and repentance in Mme. de Maintenon, with her temperate character, consistency, and propriety.

The Regency was a period of scandal and wantonness, personified in the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry. The licentious and extravagant, yet brilliant and exquisite, frivolous but charming, intriguing and diplomatic, was represented by the talented and politically influential Mme. de Pompadour. Complete degeneracy, vice with all manner of disguise thrown off, adultery of the lowest order, were personified in the common Mme. du Barry, who might be cla.s.sed with Louise of Savoy of the sixteenth century, while Mme. de Pompadour might be compared with Diana of Poitiers.

In this period the queens of France were of little importance, being too timid and modest to a.s.sert their rights--a disposition which was due sometimes to their restricted youth, spent in Catholic countries, sometimes to a naturally una.s.suming and sensitive nature. To this rule Maria Theresa, the wife of Louis XIV., was no exception. She inherited her sweetness of disposition and her Christian character from her mother, Isabella of France, the daughter of Henry IV. and Marie de'

Medici. She was pure and candid; a type of irreproachable piety and goodness, of conjugal tenderness and maternal love; and recompensed outraged morality for all the false pride, selfish ambition, depravity, and scandals of court. She is conspicuous as a model wife, one that loved her husband, her family, and her children.

Around Maria Theresa may be grouped the n.o.ble and virtuous women of the court of Louis XIV., for she was to that age what Claude of France was under Francis I., Elizabeth of Austria under Charles V., Louise de Vaudemont under Henry III. However, in extolling these women, it must be remembered that they had not, as queens, the opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in debauchery, licentiousness, and intrigue, as had the mistresses of their husbands; they had no power, were not consulted on state or social affairs, and had granted to them only those favors to the conferring of which the mistresses did not object.

Maria Theresa was a perfect example of the self-sacrificing mother and devoted wife. Her feelings toward the king are best expressed by the Princesse Palatine: "She had such an affection for the king that she tried to read in his eyes whatever would give him pleasure; providing he looked kindly at her, she was happy all day." Mme. de Caylus wrote: "That poor princess had such a dread of the king and such great natural timidity that she dared neither to speak to him nor to run the risk of a tete-a-tete with him. One day, I heard Mme. de Maintenon say that the king having sent for the queen, the latter requested her to go with her so that she might not appear alone in his presence: but that she (Mme. de Maintenon) conducted her only to the door of the room and there took the liberty of pushing her so as to make her enter, and that she observed such a great trembling in her whole person that her very hands shook with fright."

From about 1680, especially after the death of Mlle. de Fontanges, his last mistress, Louis XIV. began to look with disfavor upon the women of doubtful morality and to advance those who were noted for their conjugal fidelity. He became more attentive to the queen--a change of att.i.tude which was due partly to the influence of Mme. de Maintenon and partly to the fact that he was satiated with the excesses of his debauches, by which his physical system had been almost wrecked. He would not have dared to legitimatize his b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, had he not been so thoroughly idolized by his greatest heroes and most powerful ministers. As an ill.u.s.tration, it may be remarked that the Great Conde proposed the marriage of his son to the king's daughter by Mlle. de La Valliere.

The queen became so religious that she derived more enjoyment from praying at the convents or visiting hospitals than from remaining at her magnificent apartments. She waited upon the sick with her own hands and carried food to them; she never meddled in political affairs or took much interest in social functions.

Timidity, an instinctive shrinking from the slanders, calumnies, and intrigues of the court, appeared to be the most p.r.o.nounced characteristic of queens who seemed to believe themselves too inferior to their husbands to dare to offer any political counsel. While none of them were superior intellectually, they possessed dignity, good sense, and tact, "a reverential feeling for the sanct.i.ty of religion and the majesty of the throne," an admirable resignation, a painful docility and submission--qualities which might have been turned to the advantage of their owners and the state, had the former been more self-a.s.sertive.

The infidelities of their husbands caused the queen-consorts constant torture; they were forced to behold the kings' favorites becoming part of their own households and were compelled to endure the presence, as ladies in waiting, of those who, as their rivals, caused them to suffer all possible torments of jealousy and outraged conjugal love.

First among the mistresses of Louis XIV. was Mlle. de La Valliere, whom Sainte-Beuve mentions as the personification of the ideal of a lover, combining disinterestedness, fidelity, unique and delicate tenderness with a touching and sincere kindness. When, at the age of seventeen, she was presented at court, the king immediately selected her as one of his victims. Her beauty was so striking, of such an exquisitely tender type, that no woman actually rivalled her as queen of beauty. Distinguished by blond hair, dark blue eyes, a most sympathetic voice, and a complexion of rare whiteness mingled with red, she was guileless, animated, gentle, modest, graceful, unaffected, and ingenuous; although slightly lame, she was, by everyone, considered charming.

Mlle. de La Valliere was the mother of several children of whom Louis XIV. was the father. On realizing that she had rivals in the favor of the sovereign, she fled several times from the Tuileries to the convent; on her second return, the king, about to go to battle, recognized his daughter by her, whom he made a d.u.c.h.ess. Remorse overcame the mistress so deeply that she, for the third and final time, left court. Especially on the rise to power of Mme. de Montespan was she painfully humiliated, suffering the most intense pangs of conscience. The evening before her final departure to the convent, she dined with Mme. de Montespan, to drink "the cup to the dregs and to enjoy the rejection of the world even to the last remains of its bitterness."

Guizot describes this period most vividly: "When Mme. de Montespan began to supplant her in the king's favor, the grief of Mlle. de La Valliere was so great that she thought she would die of it. Then she turned to G.o.d, penitent and in despair; twice she sought refuge in a convent at Chaillot. On leaving, she sent word to the king: 'After having lost the honor of your good graces I would have left the court sooner, if I could have prevailed upon myself never to see you again; but that weakness was so strong in me that hardly now am I capable of sacrificing it to G.o.d. After having given you all my youth, the remainder of my life is not too much for the care of my salvation.'"

The king still clung to her. "He sent M. Colbert to beg her earnestly to come to Versailles that he might speak with her. M. Colbert escorted her thither and the king conversed for an hour with her and wept bitterly. Mme. de Montespan was there to meet her, with open arms and tears in her eyes." "It is all incomprehensible," adds Mme. de Sevigne; "some say that she will remain at Versailles and at court, others that she will return to Chaillot; we shall see."

Mlle. de La Valliere remained three years at court, "half penitent,"

she said, humbly, detained by the king's express wish, in consequence of the tempers and jealousies of Mme. de Montespan who felt herself judged and condemned by her rival's repentance. Attempts were made to turn Mlle. de La Valliere from her inclination for the Carmelites': "Madame," said Mme. Scarron to her, one day, "here are you one blaze of gold; have you really considered that, before long, at the Carmelites' you will have to wear serge?" She, however, was not to be dissuaded from her determination and was already practising, in secret, the austerities of the convent. "G.o.d has laid in this heart the foundation of great things," said Bossuet, who supported her in her conflict; "the world puts great hindrances in her way, and G.o.d great mercies; I have hopes that G.o.d will prevail; the uprightness of her heart will carry everything before it."

"When I am in trouble at the Carmelites'," said Mlle. de La Valliere, as for the last time she quitted the court, "I shall think of what those people have made me suffer." "The world itself makes us sick of the world," said Bossuet in the sermon which he preached on the day she took the veil; "its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness.

There is enough of bitterness, enough of injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of inconsistency and capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors--there is enough of it all, to disgust us."

When, in 1675, she took the final vows, she cut off her beautiful hair and devoted herself to the church and to charity, receiving the veil from the queen, whose forgiveness she sought before entering the convent. The king showed himself to be such a jealous lover, that when Mlle. de La Valliere entirely abandoned him for G.o.d, he forgot her absolutely, never going to the convent to see her.

She was by far the most interesting and pathetic of the three mistresses of Louis XIV.; her heart was superior to that of either of her successors, though her mind was inferior; she belonged to a different atmosphere--such kindness, charity, penitence, resignation, and absolute abandonment to G.o.d were rare among the conspicuous French women. Sainte-Beuve says: "She loved for love, without haughtiness, coquetry, arrogance, ambitious designs, self-interest, or vanity; she suffered and sacrificed everything, humiliated herself to expiate her wrong-doing, and finally surrendered herself to G.o.d, seeking in prayer the treasures of energy and tenderness; through her heart, her mental powers attained their complete development."

The fate of Mlle. de La Valliere was the same as that of nearly all royal mistresses; abandoned and absolutely forgotten by her lover, she sought refuge and consolation in religion and G.o.d's mercy. "She was dead to me the day she entered the Carmelites'," said the king, thirty-five years later, when the modest and fervent nun at last expired, in 1710, without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance.

Of an entirely different type from Mlle. de La Valliere was that haughtiest and most supercilious of all French mistresses, Mme. de Montespan. The picture drawn by M. Saint-Amand does her full justice: "A haughty and opulent beauty, a forest of hair, flashing blue eyes, a complexion of splendid carnation and dazzling whiteness, one of those alluring and radiant countenances which shed brightness around them wherever they appear, an incisive, caustic wit, an unquenchable thirst for riches and pleasure, luxury and power, the manners of a G.o.ddess audaciously usurping the place of Juno on Olympus, pa.s.sion without love, pride without true dignity, splendor without harmony--that was Mme. de Montespan." And these qualities were the secret of her success as well as of her fall.

From this description it can easily be divined of what nature was her influence and how she gained and held her power over the king. She won Louis XIV. entirely by her sensual charms, provoked him by her imperious exactions, her ungovernable fits of temper, and her daring sarcasm; always extravagant and unreasonable, she talked constantly of b.a.l.l.s and fetes, the glories of court and its scandals. Most exacting, yet never satisfied, she had no regard for the interests or honor of the weak king, to whose lower nature only she appealed.

Mme. de Montespan was of n.o.ble birth, being the youngest daughter of Rochechouart, first Duke of Mortemart. She was born in 1641, at the grand old chateau of Tonnay-Charente, and was educated at the convent of Sainte-Marie. Brought up religiously, she at first evinced a much greater tendency toward religion than toward worldly ambition and vanity. Mme. de Caylus, in her _Souvenirs_, wrote that "far from being born depraved, the future favorite had a nature inherently disinclined to gallantry and tending to virtue. She was flattered at being mistress, not solely for her own pleasure, but on account of the pa.s.sion of the king; she believed that she could always make him desire what she had resolved never to grant him. She was in despair at her first pregnancy, consoled herself for the second one, and in all the others carried impudence as far as it could go."

She was known first as Mlle. Tonnay-Charente, and was maid of honor to the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans. When, at the age of twenty-two, she married the Marquis de Montespan and became lady in waiting to the queen, her beauty, wit, and brilliant conversational powers at once made her the centre of attraction; for several years, however, the king scarcely noticed her. Upon secretly becoming his mistress in 1668 and openly being declared as such two years later, her husband attempted to interfere, and was unceremoniously banished to his estates; in 1676 he was legally separated from her. She persuaded the king to legitimatize their children, who were confided to Mme. Scarron,--afterward Mme. de Maintenon,--who later influenced the king to abandon his mistress.

Mme. de Montespan's power, lasting fourteen years, was almost unlimited, and was the epoch of courtiers intoxicated with pa.s.sion and consumed by vice, infatuated with the king and his mistress, whose t.i.tle as _maitresse-en-t.i.tre_ was considered an official one, conferring the same privileges and demanding the same ceremonies and etiquette as did a high court position. The only opposition incurred was from the clergy, who eventually, by uniting their forces with the influence of Mme. de Maintenon, brought about the disgrace of the mistress.

When, in 1675, she desired to perform her Easter duties publicly at Versailles, the priest refused to grant absolution until she should discontinue her wanton, adulterous life. She appealed to the king, and he referred the decision of the matter to Bossuet, who decided that it was an imperative duty to deny absolution to public sinners of notorious lives who refused to abandon them. This was immediately before her legal separation from her husband.

Influenced by the preaching of men like Bourdaloue and Bossuet, the king resolved to abandon his powerful mistress; in 1686 she was finally separated from Louis XIV., but did not leave Versailles until 1691, when, becoming reconciled to her fate, she decided to retire to a convent. Bossuet became her spiritual adviser, and described her habits in the following letter to the king:

"I find Mme. de Montespan sufficiently tranquil. She occupies herself greatly in good works. I see her much affected by the verities I propose to her, which are the same I uttered to your majesty. To her--as to you--I have offered the words by which G.o.d commands us to yield our whole hearts to him; they have caused her to shed many tears. May G.o.d establish these verities in the depths of the hearts of both of you, in order that so many tears, so much suffering, so many efforts as you have made to subdue yourselves, may not be in vain."

The king did not wholly abandon his mistress; from a material point of view, she was more powerful than ever, for Louis XIV. gave orders to his minister, Colbert, to do for Mme. de Montespan whatever she wished, and her wishes caused a heavy drain upon the treasury. The king continued to pay court to other favorites, such as the Princesse de Soubese and Mlle. de Fontanges; the latter was his third mistress, but her career was of short duration, as one of the last acts of Mme.

de Montespan was, it is said, the poisoning of Mlle. de Fontanges; this, however, is not generally accepted as true, although the Princesse Palatine wrote the following which throws suspicion upon the former favorite: "Mme. de Montespan was a fiend incarnate, but the Fontanges was good and simple. The latter is dead--because, they say, the former put poison in her milk. I do not know whether or not this is true, but what I do know well is that two of the Fontanges's people died, saying publicly that they had been poisoned." With the increasing influence of Mme. de Maintenon, the king completely forgot his former mistress.

Mme. de Montespan was possibly the most arrogant and despotic of all French mistresses and she was, also, the most humiliated. She had inspired no confidence, friendship, love, or respect in Louis XIV., who eventually looked with shame and remorse upon his relations with her. It took her sixteen years to overcome her terrible pa.s.sion and to give up the court forever. Not until 1691 did she become reconciled to departure from Versailles; thenceforth, penitence conquered immoral desires. M. Saint-Amand says she not only "arrived at remorse, but at macerations, fasts, and haircloths. She limited herself to the coa.r.s.est underlinen and wore a belt and garters studded with iron points. She came at last to give all she had to the poor;" she also founded a hospital in which she nursed the sick.

While at the convent, she tried, in vain, to effect a reconciliation with her husband; not until every avenue to a social life was cut off from her, did she entirely surrender herself to charity and the service of G.o.d. In her latest years, she was so tormented by the horrors of death that she employed several women whose only occupation was to watch with her at night. She died in 1707, forgotten by the king and all her former a.s.sociates; Louis XIV. formally prohibited her children, the Duke of Maine, the Comte de Toulouse, the Comte de Vexin, and Mlles. de Nantes, de Blois, and de Tours, from wearing mourning for her.

A striking contrast to Mme. de Montespan in character, disposition, morality, and birth was Mme. de Maintenon, one of the greatest and most important women in French history. What is known of her is so enveloped in calumny and falsehood and made so uncertain by dispute, that to disentangle the actual facts is almost an impossibility, despite the glowing tribute paid to her in the immense work published recently by the Comte d'Haussonville and M. Gabriel Hanotaux.

It would seem that the more the history of Mme. de Maintenon is studied, the more one is led away from a first impression--which usually proves to be an erroneous one. Thus, M. Lavallee, in his first work, _Histoire des Francais_, wrote that she "was of the most complete aridity of heart, narrow in the scope of her affections, and meanly intriguing. She suggested fatal enterprises and inappropriate appointments; she forced mediocre and servile persons upon the king; she had, in fine, the major share in the errors and disasters of the reign of Louis XIV." A few years later he wrote, in his _Histoire de la maison royale de Saint-Cyr_: "Mme. de Maintenon gave Louis XIV.

none but salutary and disinterested counsels which were useful to the state and instrumental in making less heavy the burdens of the people."

Opinion in general, especially French opinion, has been very bitter toward her. History has even reproached her with having been a usurper, a tyrant, and a selfish master. The great preacher, Fenelon, wrote to her:

"They say you take too little part in affairs. Your mind is more capable than you think. You are, perhaps, a little too distrustful of yourself, or, rather, you are too much afraid to enter into discussions contrary to the inclination you have for a tranquil and meditative life."

Is this picture, left by Emile Chasles and accepted by M. Saint-Amand, truthful? "This intelligent woman, far from being too much heeded, was not enough so. There was in her a veritable love for the public welfare, a true sorrow in the midst of our misfortunes. To-day, it is necessary to retrench much from the grandeur of her worldly power and add a great deal to that of her soul." M. Saint-Amand believes her sincere when she wrote to Mme. des Ursins:

"In whatever way matters turn, I conjure you, madame, to regard me as a person incapable of directing affairs, who heard them talked too late to be skilful in them, and who hates them more than she ignores them.... My interference in them is not desired and I do not desire to interfere. They are not concealed from me, but I know nothing consecutively and am often badly informed."

The opinions of her contemporaries are not always flattering, but such are possibly due to envy and jealousy or to some purely personal prejudice. Thus, when the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, the Princesse Palatine, calls her "that nasty old thing, that wicked devil, that shrivelled-up, filthy old Maintenon, that concubine of the king," and casts upon her other gross aspersions that are unfit to be repeated, one must remember that the calumniator was a German, the daughter of the Elector Palatine Charles-Louis, a woman honest in her morals, but shameless in her speech, who loved the beauties of nature more than those of the palaces; more shocked at hypocrites than at religion or irreligion, she took Mme. de Maintenon to be a type of the impostors whom she detested. It was her son who became regent, and it was her son who married one of the illegitimate daughters of Louis XIV.--an alliance of which his mother had a horror.

The memoirs of Saint-Simon are interesting, but the odious picture he has drawn of Mme. de Maintenon is hardly in accord with later appreciations. M. Saint-Amand sums up the two cla.s.ses of critics thus:

"The revolutionary school which likes to drag the memory of the great king through the mire, naturally detests the eminent woman who was that king's companion, his friend and consoler. Writers of this school would like to make of her a type not only odious and fatal, but ungraceful and unsympathetic, without radiance, charm or any sort of fascination. She is too frequently called to mind under the aspect of a worn old woman, stiff and severe, with tearless eyes and a face without a smile. We forget that in her youth she was one of the prettiest women of her time, that her beauty was wonderfully preserved, and that in her old age she retained that superiority of style and language, that distinction of manner and exquisite tact, that gentle firmness of character, that charm and elevation of mind, which, at every period of her life, gained her so much praise and so many friends."

Mme. de Maintenon was born in prison. Her maiden name was Francoise d'Aubigne. She was the granddaughter of Agrippa d'Aubigne, the historian. Her father had planned to settle in the Carolinas, and his correspondence with the English government, to that effect, was treated as treason; he was thrown into prison, where his wife voluntarily shared his fate and where the future Mme. de Maintenon was born. After the death of her father, she was confided to her aunt, Mme. de Villette, a Calvinist, who trained her in the principles of Protestantism. Because of the refusal of her daughter to attend ma.s.s, her mother put her in charge of the Countess of Neuillant who, with great difficulty, converted Francoise back to Catholicism.

At the home of the Countess of Neuillant, she often met Scarron, the comic poet--a paralytic and cripple--who offered her money with which to pay for admission to a convent, a proposition which she refused; subsequently, however, the countess sent her to the Ursulines to be educated. When, after two years, she lost her mother and was thus left without home, fortune, or future prospects, she consented, at the age of seventeen, to marry the poet. Thus, born in a prison, without even a dowry, harshly reared by a mother who was under few obligations to life, more harshly treated in the convent, introduced as a poor relation into the society of her aunt and to the friends of her G.o.dmother, the Countess of Neuillant, she early learned to distrust life and suspect man, and to restrain her ambitions.