In the play the conflict between the King, his mistress and her husband was played out on a literal stage, at the Tuileries on 16 January 1668, and before Athénaïs could enjoy her promising future, she had to await the dénouement of the piece. The stately masque of Versailles was still in the future and for the present, events had a more melodramatic flavor.
Un partage avec Jupiter
N’a rien du tout qui déshonoré
Et sans doute il ne peut être que glorieux
De se voir le rival du souverain des dieux.
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Thus Molière has Jupiter console the deceived husband, Amphitryon, who, returning from the wars, discovers that he has been cuckolded by Jupiter, who has taken Amphitryon’s shape to spend a night with his wife Alcmène. The play has been categorized as belonging to the “literature of war” which developed as a subgenre following the King’s return from his first successful military campaign and which also includes Corneille’s
Au Roi de Son Retour de Flandre.
The implications of Molière’s account of the returning warrior duped by the king of the gods have proved an irresistible parallel to Louis’s affair with Athénaïs, though the play cannot be read as a rigorous allegory; it is, after all, an adaptation from Plautus, and was also adapted by the English poet Dryden. Given the general toleration of a king’s extramarital dalliances, Molière could presume that his audience would respond with a degree of sophisticated amusement to any allusions the piece seemed to cast on current events. Jupiter’s justification reflected the opinion of the court that to be cuckolded by the King was no disgrace. Conversely, a change of
maîtresse en titre
amounted to an affair of state, and the court cabals would be anxious to learn about the situation so that they could realign their loyalties and know who to cultivate. Thus Molière’s reference to the affair would have been apposite.
Amphitryon
is a tempting source of clues to the extent of public knowledge of Louis’s relationship with Athénaïs after the 1667 campaign. Did Molière wish to flatter the King by ridiculing the Marquis? Or did Louis take pleasure in seeing his love affair so slyly revealed? Despite the coincidences of life and art, it is best not to see the play as a “key,” particularly as Louise de La Vallière was still the official mistress, and some ambiguity still shrouded Athénaïs’s position. For example, the Marquis de Saint-Maurice, who had observed Louis’s interest in Athénaïs in Flanders, wrote to the Duc de Savoie in February 1668, a month after
Amphitryon
was performed before the court, that despite the King’s attentions, Mme. de Montespan “still held firm.” At the theater of the court, the drama was just beginning. If the Marquis de Montespan knew of it, he had the sense, for the moment, to hold his tongue.
While his wife had been campaigning with the King, Montespan, hardly a triumphant Amphitryon, had fought a more or less ignominious campaign of his own near another disputed border with Spain at Roussillon. His conduct was passable at first, and he fought in the front line in a brief skirmish with the Spaniards. Louis, occupied in Paris that autumn of 1667, cleverly magnified the incident in order to soften up Montespan. “The King claims to be very satisfied with the bravery and bearing which you have shown in this encounter,” ran the dispatches, “and His Majesty will give proof of this when he has occasion.”
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If, perhaps, it turned out that Amphitryon would be content to share his wife with Jupiter.
Delighted to find himself for once in the King’s good graces, and too conceited to question the reason, Montespan celebrated with a little romantic dalliance of his own. He kidnapped a serving-girl in Perpignan and spirited her away disguised as a member of his own cavalry. The girl’s outraged family had her apprehended by the bailiffs and committed to prison for her own safety. Montespan disgraced himself by fighting with the bailiff to recover her, but he soon grew bored and abandoned the girl with a meager dowry of twenty pistoles for her honor, returning early in 1668 to Paris, where he may have seen or heard about Molière’s play. He remained there until 1 March, borrowing yet more money, and appearing to notice nothing odd in his domestic affairs, even though Athénaïs had moved their lodgings from St. Germain to the Rue St. Nicaise on the right bank, supposedly in order to facilitate her attendance on the Queen. Montespan, now in debt to the sum of 48,000 livres, could not stay long in Paris for fear of his creditors. Before setting off with his company back to Roussillon, he signed a document giving Athénaïs power of attorney over his affairs in his absence, demonstrating that at this stage he still had complete trust in his wife, even if he appeared to be indifferent to her welfare. He received notice of leave in June, and spent some time at his château, Bonnefont in Gascony, before returning to Paris at the end of the summer.
In September, the court were at Chambord, the childhood home of Louise de La Vallière, who still remained at court as favorite to shelter Athénaïs from scandal, a bizarre arrangement that continued for a total of six years. Louis made love to her absentmindedly from time to time, but had really lost all interest in her. Louise attempted a symbolic reproach to the King at Chambord, indicating a window which contained a famous couplet, supposedly scratched on the glass by François I: “
Souvent femme varié/Mal habie qui s’y fie
” — Woman is often fickle/Foolish the man who trusts her. Annoyed, Louis had the pane removed. Athénaïs was typically less reticent, complaining to Louis in no uncertain terms about his want of delicacy. Failing to placate her, Louis admitted that the situation had come about “
insensiblement.
” “Insensibly for you, perhaps,” sniffed Athénaïs, “but very sensibly for me!”
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It appears that Louis was dissembling, since something in his character clearly found this “harem” model appealing: it was to be repeated throughout his life. Perhaps he felt that Jupiter had the right to more than one woman at a time.
At the time of the visit to Chambord, Athénaïs discovered to her horror that she was pregnant. She was so anxious that she lost weight and her complexion faded. Mme. de Caylus wrote: “She is so changed that no one would recognize her.” Until now, Athénaïs’s husband had remained as ignorant as Molière’s cuckold of the affair, but now the storm would surely break. No amount of classicized double entendres could conceal the fact that double adultery was a serious and shocking offense. The King’s confessors would turn a blind eye to legions of seduced maids-of-honor, but a married man who cohabited with a married woman committed sacrilege in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Moreover, Montespan could legally claim any children his wife bore by the King as his own. Athénaïs was so frightened of this that she even considered asking Louise to pretend that the baby was hers.
Athénaïs was frantic, but she rallied herself and concealed the source of her despair under a new style of dress she had invented, a
robe battante
in loose, flowing chiffon. She was able to remain inconspicuous when the dress, slyly known as
l’Innocente,
immediately became the height of fashion. If Athénaïs suffered from the shame of this first pregnancy, “She consoled herself for the second,” wrote Mme. de Caylus, “and carried her impudence about the others as far as possible.” Later, everyone at court knew that if Mme. de Montespan was wearing her
robe battante,
she must be pregnant again.
When the time came for Athénaïs to give birth to their first child, Louis took charge of the arrangements personally. He rented a little house in the Rue de l’Echelle, not far from the Tuileries. As Athénaïs’s labor began, Clément, the
accoucheur,
was summoned, blindfolded and pushed into a darkened room. When his eyes were uncovered, he saw a masked woman in the bed. The candles were put out. The doctor began to voice his opinion on such an odd arrangement, declaring that he was sure this secrecy must be concealing a scandal. He was silenced by a man’s voice from the bed curtains, instructing him that he was there to do a job, and not to deliver a moral discourse. Clément then grumbled that he was hungry, and really couldn’t begin until he had eaten. A young man slipped out from the shadows and rummaged around, producing some bread and jam, which the doctor munched appreciatively, adding that a little wine to wash it down wouldn’t go amiss. “Have patience,” muttered the King, “I can’t do everything at once.”
“Finally,” remarked the doctor as a full glass was produced.
Just as he was about to ask for another, a groan from the bed put an end to the apparently interminable meal, and the doctor rolled up his sleeves. Louis hid once again in the bed curtains and held Athénaïs’s hand, constantly asking when it would be over. The child was delivered about an hour later. Louis had to shield his face as he handed the doctor a candle.
This charming (if in part apocryphal) story shows Louis, who had probably never prepared a meal in his life, let alone served a bourgeois with a glass of wine, at his most human. For a while, in the dim candlelight, Louis and Athénaïs could have been any young lovers, he stroking her hair and soothing her as he waited anxiously to see his child. So much secrecy surrounded the birth that there is even dispute as to the baby’s gender, but it seems most likely that it was a girl. She was spirited away by one of Athénaïs’s maids, a Mlle. des Oeillets. Her name is not known for certain – it is thought to have been Louise-Françoise, a fitting combination of her parents’ names — for she died, inconspicuously, three years later. Athénaïs was to give her second daughter by Louis, Mlle. de Nantes, born in 1673, the same name as her mysterious elder sister.
Despite the secrecy surrounding her pregnancy, it could not be long before Montespan discovered Athénaïs’s secret, although it is uncertain how exactly he learned of her betrayal. His father, the old Marquis d’Antin, had taken a sanguine view of the matter. When he heard the story, he lifted up his hands and cried “Praise the Lord! Here is Fortune knocking on my door at last!” Athénaïs’s own father, the Duc de Mortemart, was unkindly supposed to have taken a similar view of his daughter’s moral decline. A court poem describes his reaction to the news of her pregnancy:
Quand Mortemart eut aperçu
Que Montespan avait concu
Il prit son theorbe et chanta
Alleluia!
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The Marquis de Montespan, however, would not have his pride insulted even by the King, and resolved to create a scandal. Having ignored far more obvious hints, Montespan finally saw the light when the Duc de Montausier was appointed governor to the eight-year-old Dauphin. The Duc’s wife was Athénaïs’s friend Julie, who had helped her to arrange rendezvous with the King at Avesnes in the first secretive stages of their affair, and it was suddenly obvious to Montespan that the Duc owed his appointment to Athénaïs’s gratitude for this assistance. If this was so, it was a bold demonstration of power on Athénaïs’s part. Montespan rampaged through Paris society, recklessly denouncing the King as a second David, a thief and a vile seducer of women (obviously in a different league of wickedness from that of a man who kidnapped only servants). He bored and embarrassed the whole town with his tirades, and when society was not yawning, it was sneering at this ridiculous little Gascon who had the bad taste to complain that the King had seduced his wife. Why not be content to disguise your cuckold’s horns with a discreet profit, since there was no disgrace in that? (This level of tolerance was to some degree contingent on the fact that Athénaïs’s pregnancy was unknown, as double adultery resulting in children was a much more serious matter.) But Montespan was the opposite of discreet. He showed the King’s cousin Mademoiselle, one of his godparents, a text he claimed to have written which criticized the King in the strongest terms and called down Biblical imprecations on his royal head. Mademoiselle tried to reason with Montespan. “You are mad,” she told him. “You must not tell such stories. People will never believe that you wrote this harangue; they’ll think it’s your uncle, the Archbishop of Sens, who is on bad terms with Mme. de Montespan.”
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But Montespan was too maddened with rage to pay her any attention.
Concerned, Mademoiselle sought out Athénaïs, and they took a private stroll on the terrace at St. Germain. Mademoiselle warned Athénaïs of her husband’s fury, adding that if he did not calm down, he ran the risk of ending up in prison. Athénaïs hid her fear with a show of bravado, replying that she was ashamed to see her husband causing as much amusement to the hoi polloi as the vulgarities uttered by her parrot. Just at that moment, Athénaïs received an urgent message that Montespan was actually in the palace, in Mme. de Montausier’s apartment. Too late, she rushed to her friend, and discovered Julie prostrate on a sofa, weeping and trembling with fear.
The next time Montespan appeared, he found Athénaïs with Julie. He made an appalling scene, treating both women to “unimaginable insults,” according to Mademoiselle, and then disappearing like a stage villain, leaving them hysterical with fear. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been real, but as it was, Athénaïs was tormented by his harassment. He stalked her, breaking into her bedroom at night and then vanishing, or lying in wait for her and beating her. Even worse, he was boasting in Paris that he was frequenting the filthiest brothels in town in the hope of contracting syphilis and passing it on to the King via Athénaïs. Terrified, Athénaïs changed her lodgings and moved into Mme. de Montausier’s apartment. When he found out, Montespan broke down the door and attempted to rape his wife, who clung to her friend for safety, both of them screaming for help as Montespan tried to wrench them apart. The servants rushed in, and Montespan had to content himself with screaming abuse at Athénaïs. The next rumor was that Montespan was planning to abduct his wife and carry her off to Spain.