The Hurlyburly's Husband (29 page)

The physician from Bourbon-l’Archambault certified the death.

‘Are you sure?’ insisted the maid. ‘Because in her lineage there has already been one woman resuscitated!’

The physician confirmed that no condensation had formed on the mirror he held to the marquise’s lips – ‘She is dead’ – and went out.

The maid asked, ‘Now where did the Maréchale de Coeuvres go?’

‘Who shall pay my fees for the funeral?’ asked the curé of Bourbon-l’Archambault beneath the vaulted ceiling of his church.

‘Of that we have no idea, Père Pétillon. D’Antin cannot be reached and the marquises and maréchales of the region who were wont to visit her in the event she might someday be restored to royal favour, and who honoured her like a queen at the beginning of her stay, now reply that it is no longer their business. Courtiers are eminently practical people.’

‘Well, that’s as may be, but you can’t leave her here like this! It has been three weeks! She stinks!’

‘What are we to do …’ apologised the maid, surrounded by the dead woman’s servants. ‘The Duc du Maine had some difficulty hiding the joy he felt on learning of his mother’s death. And when we spoke to him of burial fees, he burst out laughing. As for the Comte de Toulouse, when he heard that she was on her deathbed, he set out at once for Bourbon, but when he got to Montargis and learnt of her death, and that we were waiting for him to organise and pay for the funeral, he turned round and fled at a gallop. And went to hide his sorrow on his commode.’

‘On the other hand, we did wonder …’ interrupted a valet, ‘since before dying she endowed all the Capuchins of the town, and the parish clergy, whether you mightn’t, all the same, perhaps …’

‘No, no, no,’ said the curé. ‘For the biggest harlot in all of France? You jest! Go rather to her erstwhile lover.’

‘’Tis said that the King, on hearing of the marquise’s imminent demise, remained expressionless, and went stag hunting as planned before the news arrived, and then he walked alone in his gardens until nightfall, but he has contributed nothing to bury her.’

‘Then you shall pay!’ decided the curé. ‘You are the ones who brought her here, so you shall pay.’

‘What?’ protested the maid. ‘This powerful lady has come to naught, her dreadful eyes but recently closed, now everyone flees and her corpse is left to rot, and her servants are to be responsible?’

‘The servants shall share the cost of the funeral. What a stench!’ lamented the priest, standing near the coffin, which had been set down on the flagstones of the church.

‘It is because her body, once so fair, was subjected to the indignity of an ignorant scalpel. Before we brought it to you, her corpse was entrusted to an amateur physician, and he opened her up without really knowing how to go about it. The marquise left precise instructions regarding the way she wished her body to be treated after her demise – she wanted to bequeath her heart and her viscera to the priory at Saint-Menoux.’

‘Her heart? Did she even have one?’ smiled the curé. ‘And there, what is in that urn?’

‘Precisely, her heart and her…’

‘Ah, that explains the stink! Look there, the urn is poorly sealed. Remove it from this place! Mesnier!’ Père Pétillon called, addressing a local resident who was kneeling on a prie-dieu, wearing a shepherd’s cape and cheap coloured stockings. ‘Take that urn to the priory at Saint-Menoux. Go! ’Tis only three leagues from here. The hag’s servants will give you a coin.’

The man in the shepherd’s cape picked up the urn and sniffed it with a grimace, then went out, whilst the curé said to the servants, ‘Until you are able to find d’Antin and he takes a decision, I shall keep the remains here and leave you a copy of the death certificate that I drew up on the day she arrived.’

On this day, 28 May 1707, I the undersigned curé do hereby declare that the body of Françoise de Montespan, who died in this town on Friday 27th after receiving the last rites, was brought to me in this church, where she lies until other dispositions are made.

On the dusty highway leading to Saint-Menoux, on a hot late afternoon in June, the man to whom the urn had been given held it as far out in front of him as possible. The whiffs coming from the poorly sealed receptacle disgusted him and made him so nauseous that he wanted to retch, and after he had gone half a league, the man felt too repulsed by the odour emanating from the urn to continue the journey.

‘What the devil is inside there?’

He opened the flask with its rounded sides and what he saw disgusted him so much that he tipped the contents out into a ditch. Pigs and dogs rushed over to the entrails. While the pigs devoured the stomach and liver in the grass, the dogs dashed off with the marquise’s intestines, heart and lungs.

The man with the coloured stockings watched as the scrawny yellow hounds loped away down the dusty road, dragging behind them the entrails of the King’s former favourite. And she who had had the devil’s own beauty seemed born again.

Her long intestines trailed behind the curs and seemed to rise in the air, spinning and swaying from side to side, the way the skirt of her gown took flight when she danced, twirling in one of Benserade’s ballets. The green, blue and pink colours of the small intestine accentuated the effect. The dogs’ hind legs became entangled in the large intestine and tore it, and their claws left narrow parallel tracks of shit, not unlike the gaps in the parquet floorboards at Versailles.

There was a brilliant dazzle of sunlight, and the silhouettes of the poplar trees glowed bronze like monumental statues by Girardon. The mastiffs’ long legs were consumed by light, flowing, floating, and there was a sound of jaws grinding. Two of the dogs were running shoulder to shoulder, fighting over the marquise’s lungs. The lungs stretched out, compressed and were stretched again. And now she was breathing! At the head of the pack a Cerberus, his chops drawn back over his fangs, chewed up Athénaïs’s heart, spattering blood on every side. It beat again – she lived once more, in a mirage.

At the foot of the cross in the cemetery at Bonnefont the wild grasses and flowers danced and swayed beside a grave, and a whisper rose, like a word. Some would say it was the wind blowing through the leaves, but it was in fact the voice of Louis-Henri, who had begun to hope again and was calling out ‘Françoise …’

Jean, can you tell us what your novel The Hurlyburly's Husband is about?

The novel tells the story of a husband turned cuckold by Louis XIV who, contrary to the other married nobles at the time who practically pushed their wives into the king's bed so they would receive compensation in the form of money and suchlike, never accepted his fate.

What inspired you to write about such a subject?

I fell upon the story of this Monsieur de Montespan whose world had caved in and who had then been forgotten. I felt it was important to bring him back to life in a book because, frankly, he wasn't just some ordinary guy.

How did you go about the enormous amount of historical research you must have done for the book?

I spent about eight months in a library reading all I could on the seventeenth century. I wanted to be able to describe exactly the way people dressed and washed at the time.

The seventeenth century was one of the dirtiest times in France's history. For example, we know now that Louis XIV went his whole life without taking a single bath. And at the Château de Versailles, for 5,000 people, there were only two toilets! People did their business everywhere. It was a veritable cesspit.

Monsieur de Montespan seems like an extraordinary character: a desperate and infatuated man.Would it be right to call him the hero of your novel?

Oh yes, he's the hero! To love your wife would seem the normal thing to do but in Monsieur de Montespan's case it becomes something heroic.

And Madame de Montespan? Is she the anti-hero of the novel?

I didn't want to treat her like a whore because that isn't the case. She was a normal woman who didn't have a choice because, at that time, women didn't have the right to refuse the king's advances. A wife who said no to Louis XIV would find herself either in prison for the rest of her life or banished, along with her husband and the rest of her extended family, to the French colonies.

Having said that, Madame de Montespan did eventually take a fancy to Louis XIV. To the point even where she turned insane and made animal sacrifices in her desperation to retain his affections. She is a very interesting character but, naturally, it's her husband I admire.

If you had to classify this book, what would it be? A comedy, a tragedy, a love story or a little bit of all three?

First of all it is a love story about a husband whose whole world is his wife. He never gives up on her. He messed up his life by trying to win her back. But he was also funny, with a real cheek. Nobody else in France in the seventeenth century would have dared, as he did, to provoke and make fun of Louis XIV.

He was the first man during that era of servility and subservience to dare to say to the king, ‘No, I won't let it happen. A monarch can't just do what he wants. No one can tell me he has the right to grab any taken woman he wants.'

For me, the Marquis de Montespan is the seed of what, one hundred years later, we call the French Revolution. I love this man. I would have loved to have met him and been his friend.

1) To what extent is this novel about Monsieur de Montespan’s revenge? What does he achieve?

2) Monsieur de Montespan’s campaign of revenge gets increasingly desperate and sordid as the book progresses. Is he justified? Does the act of revenge have limits?

3) What is your view of the relationship between Monsieur and Madame de Montespan?

4) Which character do you find most sympathetic, and whom do you like least? Do your sympathies change in the course of the story?

5) The book is based on a true story. Does Jean Teulé succeed in bringing that particular chapter of French history to life?

6) One critic described
The Hurlyburly’s Husband
as a ‘bawdy romp’. Do you agree?

Jean Teulé
lives in the Marais with his companion, the French film actress Miou-Miou. An illustrator, film maker and television presenter, he is also the prize-winning author of more than ten books including
The Suicide Shop
.

Alison Anderson
has translated many books into English including
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
and is herself a published novelist. She lives near Lausanne, Switzerland.

Also by Jean Teulé:

The Suicide Shop
Eat Him if you Like

First published in France as
Le Montespan
by Éditions Julliard,

Paris

© Éditions Julliard Paris, 2008

First published in Great Britain as
Monsieur Montespan
in 2011

by Gallic Books, 59 Ebury Street, London, SW1W 0NZ

This amended ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Gallic Books, 2013

The right of Jean Teulé to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 9781906040796

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