Athenais (18 page)

Louise confided her intentions to Bishop Bossuet, former prelate of Condom who, since 1662, had held a position at court as tutor to the Dauphin. Bossuet, who was to become a great friend of Mme. Scarron, approved her intentions and agreed to discuss the plan with Athénaïs. Athénaïs treated the idea with fearful contempt, retreating as usual into mocking laughter. “La Vallière a Carmelite nun? Insolent and ridiculous!”
¹⁰
As well as despising Louise’s theatrical excesses, she was wary of the public exposure her predecessor’s departure would bring. Undoubtedly, she was also sensitive to the censure implied by the choice of the Carmelites, and perhaps afraid of what Louise’s decision might indicate for her own future. Would she, too, be expected to retreat into the harsh, rigorous life of a nun if the King should grow tired of her? To Athénaïs, who thrived on the energy and intrigue of court life, the idea of mortifying her beautiful flesh under a terrible rule of silence was anathema. But her main feeling, of course, was delight at finally being rid of her irritating rival, so she made no objection to Louise’s vocation, requesting only that her choice of retreat be a little less extreme.

Louise, however, had already managed to overcome the Carmelites’ resistance to her application by talking her friend the Maréchal de Bellefonds into interceding with them via his aunt, a member of the order known as Sister Agnes. By October 1673, this lady had eventually persuaded the nuns to accept Louise, and all that remained was to obtain the permission of the King. Athénaïs, anxious to prevent the scheme, sent Mme. Scarron to try to deter Louise, but even her frightening descriptions of the austerities of convent life failed to change the former favorite’s mind. Would it not be wiser to enter the convent as a private benefactress, to give herself time to reflect? persisted Mme. Scarron. And, she might have added, not to cast aspersions on the current favorite. “Would that be penitence?” asked the immovable Louise. She complained to the governess about the way Athénaïs and Louis treated her. “When I suffer at the Carmelites, I shall think of what these persons made me feel,” she declared.
¹¹

The combination of Louise’s stubbornness and Bossuet’s entreaties eventually succeeded, and 21 April 1674 was fixed as the date for the Duchesse de Vaujours to retire from the world. The court did not really believe in her vocation — they had seen it all before. “Mme. de La Vallière talks no more about retiring,” wrote Mme. de Sévigné. “Her waiting woman threw herself at her feet to dissuade her from doing so. Could she resist such an appeal?” Most people thought that Louise was crying wolf again. Later, to suit her own purposes, Mme. de Maintenon, as she had by then become, interpreted Louise’s eagerness to embrace the Carmelite order as a wondrous instance of the workings of grace, but at the time she, too, was less than convinced. Only Bossuet recognized the sincerity of the former favorite’s decision, and attempted to compensate for the general mood of skepticism. “The whole court is edified and astonished at her tranquillity and cheerfulness,” he wrote to the Maréchal de Bellefonds. “The strength and humility which accompany all her thoughts are surely the mark of the Finger of God, the work of the Holy Spirit.”
¹²
Never one to miss out on any praise, Louise let it be known that she had been accustoming herself to Carmelite sacrifices by wearing a hair shirt, fasting and sleeping on the floor.

Before her departure, Louise had herself painted by Mignard with her children, the Comte de Vermandois and Mlle. de Blois. The portrait is a serious, melancholy picture, in which Louise appears to be looking beyond the court trappings — an overflowing jewel box, a purse of gold, a mask for a ball — that surround her. She holds a rose with falling petals, and two books are displayed: Thomas à Kempis’s
Imitation of Jesus Christ
and
The Rule of St. Thérèse,
patron of the Carmelites. Engraved on a column is the Latin inscription “
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
” Louise never was very original.

Despite the fact that she clearly intended to abandon her children along with her jewelry, no one has ever suggested that Louise de La Vallière was a bad mother. Unlike Athénaïs, she did not seem passionately attached to her offspring. She and her daughter, the first Mlle. de Blois, had been a pretty sight at court, addressing one another as “Mademoiselle” and “Belle Madame,” and Louise was farsighted enough to ensure that a good match be arranged for the little girl, who became the beautiful and popular Princesse de Conti. Louise’s son, the Comte de Vermandois, did not do so well. He was involved in a homosexual scandal at the age of thirteen, and Louis showed far less tolerance to his son than he extended to his brother Monsieur. In 1680 the boy was banished from court, and he died three years later in obscurity. Bossuet reports (approvingly) that the reformed sinner did not shed a single tear of sympathy or regret for her wayward son. On her retirement into the convent, Louise left the jewels she had received from the King to raise the funds for her children’s care, along with her estate at Vaujours, but she appears to have had no qualms about locking herself away from the children themselves forever.

Louise’s choice of date for her admission into religious orders was symbolic, for in April the court was to be at Fontainebleau, where she had originally become Louis’s mistress. When the time came, she made a round of farewell visits like “a princess taking leave of a foreign court.”
¹³
She took a formal leave of Louis, who shed a few sentimental tears, and then publicly prostrated herself at the feet of Marie-Thérèse and begged her forgiveness. “As my crimes have been public, it is right that my penitence be equally so,”
¹⁴
she declared. The Queen pardoned her. Annoyed by the light this apology cast on her own position, Athénaïs invited Louise to take her last meal in her private lodgings, away from the sneers of the courtiers. The next day Louise appeared at Mass before setting off in her coach for Paris, attired in a splendid gown, bidding goodbye to all the courtiers crowded around her coach for all the world as if she was departing on a journey to her estate rather than to what many around her considered a prison.

Nothing so became Louise’s life at court as her leaving of it. On arrival at the convent, she immediately adopted the nuns’ coarse habit and sheared off her beautiful blond hair. “I have made all my life such a bad use of my will that I am come to surrender it into your hands once and for all,” she announced to the Mother Superior. A year later, when her novitiate was completed, a crowd of courtiers — which included the Queen, but not the King or Mme. de Montespan — attended the ceremony of vows in the Rue St. Jacques. Bossuet preached a moving sermon and Louise was enveloped in the black veil which represented her death to the world. All the wicked society ladies had a good cry, and then tripped back to court to resume their gambling and gallantries. “After all,” sniffed Mademoiselle, “she was not the first sinner to be converted.” Louis gave no indication that he thought any longer of his old love, even though she lived, under her new name of Sister Louise de la Miséricorde, until 1710. Athénaïs, on the other hand, paid her at least two visits, the first being the occasion where she famously organized a lottery and cooked her own sauce, which she ate with a hearty appetite. Whether her motive was to gloat or to commiserate it is hard to know.

Chapter Eight

“Moderation has been declared a virtue so as to
curb the ambition of the great and console
lesser folk for their lack of fortune and merit.”

I
t could never be said that the relationship between Athénaïs de Montespan and Louis XIV was a peaceful one, but the years between 1674 and 1678 were probably their happiest time. Mme. de Sévigné’s nickname for Athénaïs, “the Torrent,” was an apt one, for her passionate nature seemed to swell as her status and power increased, engulfing everyone around her in her tantrums and rages as well as her delights. Mme. de Sévigné’s letters attest to the fascination Athénaïs’s beauty and temperament held for the aristocracy, and this zealous gossip chronicles every quarrel and rapprochement of the lovers during these turbulent, exciting years. At last Athénaïs was free to embrace the role which she had for so long believed to be her destiny, and for which she had endured public censure and six years of private frustration. Her rival was safely incarcerated in the convent, her children were legitimized, she was pregnant with another of the King’s children, Mlle. de Tours, born in 1674, and she was finally able to revel in her new public persona as the separation from her husband she had longed for had been achieved.

Until April 1674, Montespan had been kicking his heels in the provinces, but the separation proceedings were resumed as soon as Athénaïs, who had let her application lapse, received notice that he was pursuing his inheritance from his mother, which would perhaps render him solvent enough to agree to the “separation of body and goods” on friendly terms. In defiance of the order that he remain in exile, Montespan installed himself in Paris when the case began again, in gloomy lodgings close to the convent on the Rue St. Jacques where Louise de La Vallière was expiating the sin he was expected to authorize his wife to continue committing. Louis was disconcerted by his presence, and wrote to Colbert from the front for an explanation. Colbert’s response, that it was necessary that Montespan remain in situ for the two weeks or so it would take to resolve the case, prompted the King to insist that the action be expedited promptly. Recalling the scandal Montespan had tried to create before, Louis was anxious that his presence do nothing to harm Athénaïs, or to attract publicity to the case.

Any hopes Athénaïs might have had for an amicable settlement were dashed when Montespan announced, through the intermediary of his lawyer, Claude-François Brierre, that he wished to be reimbursed for the whole of his wife’s dowry. Even if the impecunious Duc de Mortemart had been able to pay, this was hardly reasonable given that Montespan had already squandered most of the money himself. The case was then put before a judge, and Athénaïs, who was represented by her friend the King’s counsel Gaspard de Fieubert, was given the unheard-of advantage of being able to prosecute her suit, that is, to bring proof of her husband’s cruelty, while Montespan had to prove the contrary. Normally, it was impossible for a wife to achieve a separation without the cooperation of her husband. The witnesses for each claimant were heard on 19 and 20 June, and the separation of “goods” was passed three days later, preceding the final judgment, which was made by six judges on 7 July. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in Athénaïs’s favor, although the grounds on which they did so were all acceptable evidence for a separation regardless of the power of the wife’s lover. The judges accepted Athénaïs’s complaint of cruelty against her person, disorderly conduct and the dissipation of her resources. However, Montespan’s lawyer was so shocked by the pronouncement against his client that he could not bring himself to read it. Montespan was ordered to pay back the 60,000 livres of his wife’s dowry that he had already received and to pay her an additional 4,000 livres annual alimony, as well as to settle any debts she had contracted during their communal life. He was forbidden to come near Athénaïs, and served with a formal petition to this effect on 16 July.

The ardor with which Athénaïs initially prosecuted her rights was hardly charitable. True, Montespan had beaten her, used her to obtain money dishonestly, been unfaithful to her and refused to allow her to see her children, yet it is surprising, for their sake if not for his, that she was not more lenient, given that she was hardly a blameless wife. Perhaps she was paying her husband back for the humiliations of their years together, or taking revenge for the scandal he had caused at court in 1669. As the mistress of the King, Athénaïs could have afforded to be generous, but instead she proceeded immediately to have the furniture from Montespan’s poor lodgings seized, and threatened to do the same with his property holdings to raise the 60,000 livres he owed her.

Montespan was outraged at his wife’s apparent intention to ruin him and their children’s patrimony. He claimed that he owed her nothing, and counterattacked by demanding the interest Athénaïs would theoretically have received on the unpaid portion of her dowry. Perhaps it was the pathetic inventory of the Marquis’s Parisian possessions that brought Athénaïs to her senses. His goods amounted to the value of a mere 950 livres, comprising in total a Flanders tapestry in seven pieces, a walnut bed, four curtains, two wool blankets, eight folding chairs and four dining chairs decorated with embroidery, twelve carved chairs, a Venetian mirror and a walnut cabinet with two cupboards and several drawers. Athénaïs was often criticized for being avaricious and grasping, but she was as generous with money as she was fond of it, and she was moved to a wry pity by the evidence of her husband’s poverty.

And so, having won her case, Athénaïs decided she was prepared to be magnanimous. She claimed via her lawyer that she had never wished to bring about the ruin of “the house of the said Seigneur her husband, nor to prejudice his children” and, with the exception of the value of his Paris goods, she accepted that her annual pension should be devoted to the education and care of the children. She also postponed her claim for the 60,000 livres of her dowry until the Marquis came into his father’s estates, and undertook to discharge 90,000 livres’ worth of debts. Montespan accepted the deed of separation without demur, and the settlement was signed by “the high and mighty lady Françoise de Rochechouart” at Versailles on 23 July. In this document, Athénaïs asserted that she wished as far as possible to contribute to “the luster of the house of Montespan” (she certainly did that) and to ensure that her children were provided with the means to be brought up according to their rank and station. Montespan talked of mending his ways and rejoining the military, and seemed now to accept the separation calmly. Athénaïs had, in the end, acted with a commendable generosity, and she was now to an extent relieved of the taint of double adultery which had so far clouded her relations with the King. She was ready to give her name to an age.