Athenais
Copyright © 2002 by Lisa Hilton
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First United States Edition
First published in Great Britain by Little, Brown and Company in 2002
For information address, Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017,
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.
First eBook Edition: October 2007
ISBN: 978-0-316-03045-8
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Historical Sources
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
To my father
Not all Medea’s herbs, not every
Spell and magical cantrip will suffice
To keep love alive, else Circe had held Ulysses And Medea her Jason, by their arts alone.
Ovid,
Ars Amatoria
Cast of Characters
LOUIS XIV, King of France.
ANNE of AUSTRIA, widow of LOUIS XIII and mother of LOUIS XIV.
MARIE-THERESE, Queen of France, wife of LOUIS XIV.
LOUIS, DAUPHIN of FRANCE, called “Monseigneur,” son of LOUIS XIV.
MARIE-ANNE-CHRISTINE-VICTOIRE, DAUPHINE of FRANCE, first wife of the DAUPHIN.
PHILIPPE, DUC D’ORLEANS, called “Monsieur,” brother of LOUIS XIV.
HENRIETTE D’ANGLETERRE, DUCHESSE D’ORLEANS, called “Madame,” first wife of PHILIPPE D’ORLEANS.
ELISABETH-CHARLOTTE, LA PRINCESSE PALATINE, called “Madame,” second wife of PHILIPPE D’ORLEANS.
PHILIPPE, DUC DE CHARTRES, then (1701) DUC D’ORLEANS, son of PHILIPPE D’ORLEANS and LA PRINCESSE PALATINE.
ANNE-MARIE-LOUISE D’ORLEANS, DUCHESSE DE MONTPENSIER, called “Mademoiselle,” cousin to LOUIS XIV.
LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE, DUCHESSE DE VAUJOURS, mistress to LOUIS XIV.
ATHENAIS DE ROCHECHOUART DE MORTEMART, MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN, mistress to LOUIS XIV.
LOUIS-HENRI DE PARDAILLON DE GONDRIN, MARQUIS DE MONTESPAN, husband of ATHENAIS.
LOUIS-ANTOINE, DUC D’ANTIN, son of ATHENAIS and MONTESPAN.
LOUIS-AUGUSTE DE BOURBON, DUC DU MAINE, son of ATHENAIS and LOUIS XIV.
LOUIS-ALEXANDRE DE BOURBON, COMTE DE TOULOUSE, son of ATHENAIS and LOUIS XIV.
LOUISE-FRANÇOISE DE BOURBON, called Mlle. de Nantes, daughter of ATHENAIS and LOUIS XIV. Married LOUIS, DUC DE BOURBON-CONDE, afterwards known as MME. LA DUCHESSE.
FRANÇOISE-MARIE DE BOURBON, called Mlle. de Blois, daughter of ATHENAIS and LOUIS XIV. Married PHILIPPE, DUC DE CHARTRES, afterwards known as DUCHESSE DE CHARTRES, then (1701) DUCHESSE D’ORLEANS.
FRANÇOISE SCARRON, afterwards MARQUISE DE MAIN-TENON, governess to ATHENAIS’s children.
GABRIELLE DE ROCHECHOUART DE MORTEMART, MARQUISE DE THIANGES, sister of ATHENAIS.
LOUIS-VICTOR, DUC DE VIVONNE, brother of ATHENAIS.
COLBERT, minister to LOUIS XIV.
LOUVOIS, minister to LOUIS XIV.
LAUZUN, aspiring husband to MADEMOISELLE.
LA REYNIE, chief of police in Paris.
LA VOISIN, fortune-teller in Paris.
E
arly in the twentieth century, an antiques dealer living near Nantes heard of two old maids, impeccably aristocratic, but embarrass-ingly impoverished, who might welcome the opportunity to make a profit on a few old trinkets. Elderly ladies traditionally being obtuse about the value of their possessions, the dealer thought it would be easy to part them from a few good pieces for far less than they were worth. So he was surprised when the women, having overcome their mortification at the idea of entering into any kind of trade, proved astute, if not positively indignant bargainers. No, Monsieur could not possibly believe they would relinquish their precious Louis XIV commode, their rare pewter, their pictures, for such a paltry sum! Really, a most indelicate suggestion. Irritated at having wasted his time, the dealer scrabbled about in a drawer for something smaller he could persuade them to part with, and closed his fingers around a tiny portrait. “Ah,” said the ladies, “the Shame of the Family.”
This intriguing person proved to be a seventeenth-century lady in the dazzling court dress of Louis XIV’s Versailles. Excited, the dealer offered the ladies a much larger sum of money than any he had mentioned so far. What could be the harm in making a little profit from an unknown woman who clearly had some terrible scandal attached to her? Why else would “the Shame of the Family” have remained anonymous for generations, if it were not that even her name were too disgraceful to pronounce? The owners had no idea as to her identity; since their own nineteenth-century childhoods, their ancestress had been known by no other name. The Shame of the Family? It must have been a scandal of distinction all the same, thought the dealer, for its cause to be so exquisitely immortalized. What was the secret of the miniature beauty, that these two respectable country ladies had never been told who she was? The dealer made his bargain, and perhaps the ladies were glad to be rid of a skeleton from the family closet.
The Marquise de Montespan had many names in her life. Athénaïs first, the goddess’s name she chose for herself. Circe, after the deadly mythological enchantress who ensnared Ulysses; Alcine, after the ravishing magician in Ariosto. Quanto, meaning “How much?,” or “the Torrent” were the famous letter-writer Mme. de Sévigné’s code names for her. Her children called her Belle Madame, her admirers La Grande Sultane or La Maîtresse Regnante. Her lover’s soldiers called her the King’s whore; the poets “Rare Masterpiece of the Gods.” Her descendants wrapped much of Europe in a skein of her lineage, but it is not certain as to how her picture found its way through the complicated legacy of her bloodline to lie hidden in a drawer for 200 years as “the Shame of the Family.” It is not surprising that the denizens of the straitlaced nineteenth century named her thus, as Athénaïs’s disgrace made her the most notorious and celebrated woman of her age. Perhaps the name she liked best was the Real Queen of France.
“Great and glorious events which dazzle the
beholder are represented by politicians as
the outcome of grand designs, whereas they are
usually the products of temperaments
and passions.”
V
ersailles today is rather a sad place. The titanic mass of the château is obscured by the crowds of buses which spew fumes and tourists on to the Cour Royale. The famous gardens retain their magnificent views, but without the attentions of their thousand gardeners they can seem as soulless as a scrubby, shrubby municipal park. Inside, the long coil of visitors shuffles over cheap, squeaky parquet, through huge doorways whose marble mantels have been replaced by painted wood. The crush, the crowd and the heat of the massed bodies in the vast rooms are perhaps all that remain true to the life of the house.
On the evening of 14 May 1664, the first of all the huge gatherings Versailles was to witness assembled for Les Plaisirs de l’Ile Enchantée. That night, Louise de La Vallière was the most envied woman in Europe. For four months, a small army of artisans had labored in the park of the simple hunting lodge that was to become the great palace of Versailles to create “the Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle” — seven days of ballets, banquets and balls which astonished the world with their magnificence. Six hundred gorgeously dressed courtiers crowded together in the cool, early-summer evening to watch the finale of the fête, and the scents of ambergris, rosewater and jasmine melded with the acrid fumes of gunpowder as fireworks swooped great arabesques of intertwining “Ls” across the sky for Louise and her lover, King Louis XIV of France. Aged twenty, this blond-haired, blue-eyed country girl was the beloved mistress of Louis the God-Given, the most powerful monarch in the world.
Louis opened the fête with a procession on the theme of the Italian poet Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso,” riding a bejeweled charger and carrying a silver and diamond sword. Louise was lucky in that her lover, as is not commonly the way with kings, was genuinely good-looking, “the most handsome and well-built man in his kingdom.”
1
True, at only five feet four, he had not attained quite the regal stature of his cousin Charles of England, but he had inherited the same exotic dark eyes and thick coffee-colored hair — which he wore long and curling before the periwig unfortunately came into fashion — from their Italian grandmother, Marie de’ Medici, and he had a good physique and well-shaped legs, a prerequisite for handsomeness before the mercies of the trouser. The great Bernini was to make a bust of Louis that has been called the finest work of portraiture of the century, his eloquent marble capturing the sensuous modeling of the young man’s face, simultaneously imperious and slightly louche. Louis appears in his true character, a passionate, proud man, and though his was a dignified beauty, it seems easy, looking at the bust, to imagine him laughing.
And the Queen? Louis, so famously courteous to women that he even touched his hat to the chambermaids, would not have dreamed of openly dedicating his gala to his mistress. The enchanted isle was officially for the pleasure of his mother, Anne of Austria, whose Spanish niece, Marie-Thérèse, was his wife and Queen of four years. Poor Marie-Thérèse. Her most interesting feature is that she was painted by Velázquez. On the diplomatic mission to Spain that preceded the royal marriage, the Maréchal de Gramont commented tactfully on the Infanta Maria Theresa’s looks by likening her to Anne, but the spiteful eyes of the courtiers observed that Louis turned visibly pale when he saw his bride for the first time. The Hapsburg genes were exhausted by consanguinity, and Marie-Thérèse was so short as to resemble one of her beloved dwarfs (thoughtfully, Louis included a few in the
tableaux vivants
). She had a lumpy, limping figure and short, stubby legs, black teeth and bulbous eyes, hardly compensated for by her flaxen hair and fine, fair skin. A childish, stupid woman, she would never learn French properly, and was bewildered by the sophisticated banter of the courtiers, which her husband increasingly appreciated. The playwright Molière had produced his risqué anti-clerical comedy
Tartuffe
for the fête, and if the pious Queen was not scandalized, like her mother-in-law, it’s because she could not understand the jokes.
Was Louise delighted with the enchantments her lover had procured for her? The orchestra played new compositions by Lully, great basins of fruit and ices were served by waiters dressed as fairy gardeners while the Four Seasons and the Signs of the Zodiac danced a ballet. Nymphs and sea monsters and whales emerged from the lake to recite poems; lions, tigers and elephants were led among the delicate pavilions, draped in rippling colored silks, which had been erected amid the trees. Louise loved the King for himself. She was shy, perhaps even ashamed. Or perhaps she realized that it was France Louis aimed to seduce with plays and masquerades and fireworks, since he was a king who would govern through pleasure, whose tyrannies were calculated as elegantly as the measures of a dance.