True Pleasures (6 page)

But now Monsieur is looking at me with narrowed eyes. ‘She is not here,' he says, shaking his head at his own credulousness. He lifts his arm pointedly and looks at his watch.

Oh, yes,
I'm
not meant to be here either.

As I turn I think: of course, this is a place of male ritual. And even though this room is officially a center of French culture, of Frenchness, the absence of women makes it, in truth, un-French, even anti-French. This empty room is wonderful, but it's not where the heart of French culture
beats. If it exists, it's surely somewhere else – it's where the women are. And if she were ever here, the presence of Hortense Mancini has now been completely erased.

We leave and the great key turns again in the lock. I sense that my guide wants to get rid of me quickly now that our quest has failed.

On the way downstairs, I thank Monsieur profusely, I apologize for disturbing him, and then, suddenly, regretfully, I am expelled from the cool fish tank of the Institut into the hot bright day. Instantly the sweat breaks out again on my legs. I need a surge of cold air and a drink.

Paris is one of the few cities in the world where a woman can be comfortable on her own. Solitary women are everywhere: in little teashops or brasseries, in bistros or restaurants. Sometimes women bring a docile husband with them (whom they tend to ignore) or a little and ugly dog (which they lavishly pet). Now I notice a new accessory has taken off – the mobile phone.

But there are still plenty of women like me, cheerfully alone, cooling down in a modest teashop behind the Louvre. During earlier visits to Paris I liked to pose in café windows looking moody and intellectual, scribbling into a notebook what I fondly told myself were haunting haiku. Now I don't bother. I don't bother to look purposeful and get out a mobile phone or a diary and write. I do what Parisians do – I sit and stare.

Have you ever wondered at the numbers of mirrors in Paris? I used to think it was because Parisians were vain and liked to look at themselves. But it's not that, or not only that. It's because the French enjoy looking at people, and don't mind being looked at in return. It's
why the most famous reception room in France is the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. It's why all the café chairs are side by side and face the streets. Inside many cafés a mirrored strip around the wall ensures that each face is seen from three angles. The French are comfortable with the provocative idea that other people make interesting viewing. (The writer Colette's very last words were
Regarde! Regarde!
) This is a profoundly disturbing notion to Anglo-Celtic societies, which is one reason I like it so much. I also like it because of its next logical conclusion: if people are objects of aesthetic pleasure, then everyone has their role to play in contributing to the beauty of their surroundings.

That's one reason why visiting the Hall of Mirrors is always a faintly disappointing experience – the mirrors should reflect exquisite men and women twirling in ice-cream-colored silks and snowy wigs under the warm twinkle of thousands of candles. Instead, they reflect Midwestern Americans in primary colored microfibers.

As I sip my drink, my head is framed in triplicate for anyone who cares to look at me. I am reminded of that famous Brassai photograph of the thirties' lovers caught multiply in corner mirrors, she with her head arched playfully back and her cigarette raised; he leaning in to her, captivated; and we, Brassai's curious audience, peering at both.

Which gets me thinking about Hortense again. She was one of those women people looked at – and talked about – all her life. There's a portrait of Hortense with one delicate breast exposed in a white chemise. She gazes serenely at the viewer – she might, you imagine, be surprised if she looked down and caught sight of her vagrant
nipple. Or perhaps not, for Hortense took to the life of a courtesan with remarkable gusto.

Hortense Mancini grew up in the spotlight, a European celebrity from birth. She was the second youngest of Cardinal Mazarin's five Mancini nieces – Parisians called them
Les Mazarinettes
– each of them brought over from Italy as children. Courtesan Ninon de Lanclos wrote to St Evremond that she thought charm ran through their blood. But even among this bevy of beauties, Hortense was special. Not only was she the most beautiful of the Cardinal's nieces, she was one of the most perfect beauties of Louis XIV's young court. She had pale olive skin, large blue-grey eyes, soft black curls and a statuesque figure. One contemporary admirer said she wasn't like one of those insipid French dolls, but more of a ‘lofty Roman Beauty'. Even when she was getting older, Hortense retained her powerful appeal: at the age of thirty-nine, men were still fighting duels over her. As Madame de Sévigné exclaimed,
Who would have believed that the eyes of a grandmother could work such havoc?

Hortense's beauty alone doesn't explain why she fascinated so many people. She was famous because she broke the rules. People in court circles felt that vicarious shiver of excitement as they followed the next instalment of the Hortense Mancini story: what would she do next? It wasn't that Hortense set out to destroy society or undermine its values. She wasn't a romantic rebel or social revolutionary; far from it. She simply wanted to redefine her own place within society, to re-establish the social order under different circumstances. But that alone, of course, was daring enough.

When her protector, the Duke of Savoy, died in 1675 and Hortense was forced to seek shelter in England, she
couldn't travel from northern Italy across France because her obsessive husband still had spies looking out for her. Hortense had to ride across French enemy territory in Switzerland, Alsace and Germany to Amsterdam to embark on the boat for England. She dressed as a man in the wig, plumed hat and silk culottes of a cavalier. She had abandoned her past and faced an uncertain future, but you wouldn't have guessed it. On the way she bumped into a girlfriend who, far from delighting in her friend's good spirits, was outraged that Hortense refused to be humbled by life's disasters.
What is most strange
, railed Sidonie de Courcelles,
is that this woman triumphs over all her misfortunes by an excess of folly which has no parallel and that after receiving this setback she thinks only of enjoying herself. When passing through here she was on horseback, befeathered and bewigged, escorted by twenty men. She talked of nothing but violins and of hunting parties and everything else that gives pleasure
.

This story, of course, made the rounds of the Paris salons. Depending on their temperament, Parisians were either captivated or appalled by a woman who seemed so happy in the midst of her life's shambles.

While Hortense was King Charles II's mistress, one of his daughters, by his long-standing mistress Barbara Cleveland, fell passionately in love with her. Instead of carefully discouraging this inappropriate relationship, Hortense ignored the King's explicit instructions and therefore her own clear social and financial interests. She and the Countess of Sussex struck up a scandalous friendship: they even took up fencing together, according to one outraged observer, dashing boisterously into St James Park for early-morning jousts with drawn swords beneath their nightgowns. It was typical of Hortense to follow her instincts rather than her interests. As a result, the King
downgraded his relationship with her immediately. Hortense became less important to ambassadors; her income less secure; her social status only guaranteed by her own charms, not her royal associations. Yet in London her salon continued to shine.

For Hortense, life was irrepressibly about
everything that gives pleasure
. The puritans and the naysayers couldn't bear it that Hortense broke the rules and got away with it. They used words like
folly
and
dissoluteness
about her actions. The English puritan John Evelyn called her
that famous and errant Lady, the Dutchesse of Mazarine
, adding darkly,
all the world knows her storie
. But Hortense's pursuit of pleasure wasn't dissolute: it was so arrow-like, so direct and unalloyed, it attained almost to innocence.

I decide to ignore my tiredness and walk the short distance to see where her adventures began – and to contemplate all that she left behind.

The Bibliothèque Richelieu on rue de Richelieu was formerly the national library of France, but now houses some of the nation's specialist manuscript and coin collections. I pause on the street outside to read the plaque. At the center of this complex of palaces and grand houses is the Palais Mazarin, formerly the Hôtel Tubeuf, owned by Cardinal Mazarin and bequeathed to his sixteen-year-old niece Hortense on the occasion of her marriage. I feel a pleased tingle. Here was Hortense Mancini's home for seven years.

I walk through the courtyard and then wind my way around the library foyer, poking my head down corridors and into various reading rooms. I'm looking for one particular room but don't really expect to find it – numerous renovations will surely have submerged it or altered it beyond recognition. But this is Paris, and of course I
should know better. For, unexpectedly, here I am. I recognize it instantly from the descriptions I have read. The gallery is long and wide. The high ceiling is elaborately painted. Grand alcoves form natural display cases, backlit by arched windows. And here's the bust of the Cardinal himself, sitting high over the portal. It's as if I have dropped into Hortense's life at that decisive moment, when the event took place that would trigger her vagabond wanderings. I look around expectantly, but it's clear that these scholarly and preoccupied French people do not share my excitement.

When Cardinal Mazarin bequeathed his home to his niece and her husband, he also left them his priceless collection of classical sculptures, carefully selected and installed in a long gallery built for the purpose. This room. The collection of Greek and Roman antiquities was famous – it was certainly the most important of its kind in France, and one of the greatest in Europe. These were peerless objects of beauty, representing a pinnacle of aesthetic achievement and a monument to the enlightenment of the ancient world.

But, as I explained to Monsieur at the Institut, Hortense Mancini's husband, the duc de Mazarin, was mad. His insanity had a prudish, religious edge to it. He wanted his little daughters to have their front teeth extracted so they wouldn't be dangerously beautiful like their mother. He wouldn't let the women of his household staff look at cows being milked as he was sure it provoked lewd thoughts. No one liked him: even the King, Louis XIV himself, couldn't stand him. No wonder. The duc used to lecture the King on his infidelities, saying he was instructed to do so by the Archangel Gabriel.

One warm night in June 1668, the duc walked into this
room. He looked around at the four hundred classical statues, the vast majority of which were, of course, nude. He was offended; more than this, he was appalled. He called for a hammer and began slowly, methodically, madly smashing the statues. It took a long time. The King learned of the desecration and sent emissaries to try and stop the tragedy, but it was too late. A priceless collection of antiquities had been destroyed.

This was the event that triggered Hortense's flight from her husband. Soon after, she put on men's clothes, collected her jewels, packed up her bags and left on horseback. Her distraught husband woke Louis XIV at 3 am to tell him the news. But by then the King had lost patience with this proselytizing bore.
‘And why did the Archangel Gabriel not give you warning?'
the monarch asked irritably.

Hortense simply walked out on her own life. She left behind wealth, privilege and a social position at the heart of French society. Not to mention four young children. Given all the more immediate and personal causes her husband had given her to leave, it seems to me both striking and appropriate that an act of aesthetic destruction triggered Hortense's flight. For some reason, this impersonal attack on beauty was, for her, the final blow to her marriage. Thereafter she was ardent in pursuit of the beauty and pleasure her husband had sought to destroy.

I wander through the library a little longer, and then head for the nearby Galerie Colbert, a gorgeous nineteenth-century arcade or
passage
, where the library has a small bookshop. As I stroll I have to admit to myself that, though I like to dwell on Hortense's glorious escape to freedom, this is, of course, not the whole of her story.

As for so many women, life got harder for Hortense as she got older. With the death of Charles II, she became vulnerable. She had money worries. Her husband kept pursuing and tormenting her. She never formed a stable romantic relationship, though she still had many friends and admirers who thronged her salon. She took to drinking a little too much. Even her epicurean capacity to live in an eternal present failed her at one stage. She hung her apartments in black and thought about going to Spain and entering a convent with her sister Marie. St Evremond wrote her a long letter explaining that such extreme options were suitable for the ugly and foolish only:
When
[they]
throw themselves into nunneries, it is a divine inspiration
. He urged Hortense to remember her assets:
You were brought up as a Queen and you deserved to be one
.