Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (13 page)

Athénaïs had hastily left the court on March 15, her departure attributed to a quarrel with Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Two days later, although the events were not connected, Louis chartered a special court specifically to handle all the poisoning cases. Called
la chambre d’arsenal
, it was better known as
la chambre d’ardente
(the burning chamber), a reference to the inquisitional courts of the sixteenth century. Presiding over the proceedings was Paris’s chief of police, Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie. It was a literal witch hunt; in the three years of the
chambre d’ardente
’s existence, 194 people were arrested and 104 of them were sentenced. Of those, 36 were executed, 4 sent to the galleys, 34 banished or fined, and the remaining 30 were acquitted.

During La Voisin’s trial, Athénaïs’s name was raised numerous times, and her family members were accused of purchasing “love potions.” Lesage testified that Athénaïs plotted to poison Mademoiselle de Fontanges. But even under torture, La Voisin herself never named Madame de Montespan, and although she went to the flames kicking and screaming and hurling epithets against the crown, she still never implicated the king’s
maîtresse en titre
.

But after her death, Catherine Monvoisin’s daughter Marie, who had psychological and emotional issues that were exacerbated by imprisonment and torture, told one elaborate tale after another, directly accusing Athénaïs of using her mother’s love powders on the king. She also accused the marquise of conspiring to murder Angélique de Fontanges, and alleged that she participated in Black Masses in order to gain the Devil’s cooperation in maintaining the monarch’s love. Marie Monvoisin also claimed that Madame de Montespan was so jealous at having been thrown over for Mademoiselle de Fontanges that she schemed to kill the king with a poison-soaked petition that was to have been delivered by La Voisin and another poisoner, who would each be paid a whopping hundred thousand ecus for their participation.

With regard to the Black Masses, which allegedly took place in 1667 or 1668, Marie accused Athénaïs of using her naked body as an altar, while a chalice containing the blood of three or four newborn babies mixed with wine rested upon her belly. During the trial, the priest who conducted these inverted Masses quoted verbatim the incantation the marquise had requested him to chant, which any sane person should have known was an absolute fabrication on his part. It asked “that the Queen should be sterile and that the King should leave her table and her bed for me” and “that the King should leave La Vallière and look at her no more, and that, the Queen being repudiated, I can marry the King.”

The queen was, of course,
not
sterile—she had already given birth numerous times, and her son, the fat and healthy dauphin, was poised to inherit his father’s kingdom. Louise de La Vallière had quit the court for a convent in 1664, three years before the first Black Masses purportedly took place. And Madame de Montespan, a noblewoman with so many years at court, would certainly know that a king could put aside his queen only for reasons of infertility. Besides, Louis could never have wed Athénaïs anyway; not only was her husband still very much alive, but in 1667 the Montespans had not yet been legally separated. The only one who believed all of the charges leveled against any of the witches’ customers, including Madame de Montespan, was the police chief, the incorruptible La Reynie.

Despite flinging her name into the mud, none of the witches on trial were able to prove that they had actually seen the
maîtresse declarée
at any of these events they described. The ambitious war minister, Louvois, intent on bringing Athénaïs down, tampered with witnesses, and admitted years later, in 1682, that the sorcerer Lesage, whom he had bribed, “could never have said a word of truth” with regard to Madame de Montespan’s connection with
l’affaire des poisons
.

The woman who may actually have participated in these gothic rituals was Athénaïs’s lady-in-waiting, Claude de Vin des Oeillets, a tall brunette who carried on a clandestine affair with the king and even bore him a love child while her employer was still his
maîtresse en titre
. A woman of Claude’s physical description is mentioned several times in the witches’ testimony. It was Claude who had more
need than la Montespan of magic love philters, as she yearned to replace Athénaïs as
maîtresse declarée
and to have the king recognize their royal bastard. And it was Claude who in 1675 brought her lover, an Englishman, to see La Voisin and Lesage to discuss assassinating Louis by giving poisons to Madame de Montespan, who would unwittingly pass them on to the king.

It took a clear head and a dear friend to sort things out for Louis, who didn’t otherwise know what to believe. His trusted finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, whose wife was governess to the king’s two youngest children by Athénaïs, and who was also a close friend of her family, sent La Reynie’s file to an expert criminologist. The lawyer analyzed Madame de Montespan’s motives, as well as Catherine Monvoisin’s. Colbert then presented the facts to His Majesty.

“Could there be a witness more reliable or a better judge of the falsity of all this calumny than the King himself? His Majesty knows in what sort of a way Mme. de Montespan has lived with himself, he has witnessed all her behavior, all her proceedings at all times and on all occasions, and a mind as clear-sighted and penetrating as Your Majesty’s has never noticed anything which could attach to Mme. de Montespan even the least of these suspicions…. Such things are inconceivable, and His Majesty, who knows Mme. de Montespan to the very depths of her soul, could never persuade himself that she could have been capable of such abominations.”

Not only did Colbert manage to convince Louis of Athénaïs’s innocence, but after a scene of tears and reproaches between the lovers, in 1680 the king appointed her superintendent of the queen’s household, the highest-ranking position for a female at court. And she remained at court for another eleven years. Moreover, Louis gave her a gift of fifty thousand livres after the poisons investigation was suspended.

In 1681, Athénaïs and the king appeared at a ball for their daughter Mademoiselle de Nantes, and that year their two youngest children, Mademoiselle de Blois and the comte de Toulouse, were legitimized. It was a banner year in another way as well. Louis personally burned the documents pertaining to Athénaïs’s involvement
in
l’affaire des poisons.
But he was never again able to fully trust, or to love, Madame de Montespan. Her reputation was forever tarnished, not only to her paramour, but to posterity.

The scandal had achieved one of the intentions of its perpetrators: By 1680, the relationship between Louis XIV and Athénaïs had dipped to an all-time low. That spring they engaged in an embarrassing public quarrel because she was wearing a very strong perfume. Did he think that she was deliberately trying to make him ill? They had another spat after the king refused to take supper in her rooms, his custom for years. From then on, he would dine with her only in the presence of the court.

However, Louis ordered La Reynie to keep all documentation with regard to Athénaïs in a dossier separate from his investigation of everyone else. The king also suspended the
chambre d’ardente
on October 1, 1680, because he thought the investigations could not continue without further damage to la Montespan’s character. La Reynie remained convinced of her guilt; her royal lover not so much. The sordid testimony of the witches and the possibility that infants were slaughtered at her behest for Black Masses was too much for Louis to bear.

On the romantic front, Louis was clearly moving on. On June 5, 1680, Madame de Sevigné wrote that a new favorite was gaining traction. “The credit of Madame de Maintenon still continues…. She goes to visit him every day; and their conversations are of a length which give rise to numberless conjectures.” Four days later she wrote, “Mme. de Maintenon’s favor is constantly increasing, while that of Mme. de Montespan is visibly declining.” In a popular joke at court, as the marquises pass each other on a staircase, Madame de Maintenon quips to la Montespan, “What, are you going down, madame? I am going up.”

Horribly jealous of her former friend and her children’s onetime nanny, Athénaïs became desperate to destroy Françoise’s pristine reputation, in an effort to displace her from Louis’ affections. She insinuated that the widow Scarron had dabbled in lesbianism with the famous courtesan Ninon de Lenclos back in their salon days in the Marais. When no one believed it, or cared, Athénaïs tried to
dangle her sister, Gabrielle, in front of the king, in order to tempt him away from Françoise.

By 1681, Louis spent only a few moments a day with la Montespan, whiling away the entire evening with Madame de Maintenon. Athénaïs’s oldest
légitimé
, the crippled duc du Maine, also preferred his beloved governess, the woman who had schlepped him across Europe and back in the search to cure his wonky spine and short leg, over the glib and glittering mother who had spent the better part of his childhood in the company of the king.

And yet, it was during a mission on behalf of the young duc du Maine’s inheritance in September 1681 that Madame de Montespan learned of the death of her six-year-old daughter, Mademoiselle de Tours. As she was en route to Bourbon at the time, her errand kept her from attending the little girl’s funeral.

The queen died on July 30, 1683. Athénaïs was disgusted at the flippant reaction of both the king and his new inamorata, Madame de Maintenon. True, Louis had never been in love with his wife, but she’d been a good woman who’d never given him cause for complaint. And even if he might be in the throes of a new romance, the couple could at least show a little respect and humility! Hers weren’t crocodile tears; the marquise de Montespan was geniunely appalled that people were making jokes about the deceased sovereign, and that no one had gone to see the poor woman’s body interred. Moreover, now that there was no queen, what would become of the position Louis had created for the marquise as superintendent of Marie-Thérèse’s household?

“Madame de Montespan wept a lot,” said Maintenon’s cousin, Madame de Caylus. “Perhaps she was afraid she’d be sent back to her husband.” There was talk around the court of getting the monarch remarried as soon as possible, but not to the mother of his brood of
légitimés
. For starters, the marquis de Montespan was still alive, which immediately disqualified Athénaïs.

Ironically, she found herself in concord with her old enemy, Bishop Bossuet, agreeing to help His Majesty find a new wife. “Without that, so well do I know him, he will make a bad marriage sooner than none.”

And yet, after the king secretly wed Madame de Maintenon in the
autumn of 1683 in a morganatic marriage (meaning that she would not have the title or rank of queen), Athénaïs could never be contented with the scenario. How could Louis prefer the frigid, self-righteous Françoise to her own sensual brilliance? “And what should I call Madame de Maintenon?” she demanded. “That goose girl, that arse-wipe!” Following one of her infamous tantrums she took to her bed for several days, pleading a migraine.

Although Louis continued to visit Madame de Montespan’s rooms at Versailles, he annexed her twenty-room apartment for his own use and relocated her to the exotic Appartement des Bains directly below his own, renovating the Turkish-style baths where the couple used to enjoy sensuous romps. After so many years of living by the king’s side, Athénaïs was being placed beneath him, a sad metaphor that was not lost on her. “The real queen” had been displaced by the secret one. Yet Madame de Montespan remained the reigning “favorite,” and nothing could erase her status as the mother of Louis’ legitimized children. As another consolation prize, he gave her the estate of Clagny for their offspring to inherit after her death.

One of the most controversial decisions of Louis’ reign was to marry his
légitimés
into the royal family. Twelve-year-old Mademoiselle de Nantes was wed to the grandson of the Grand Condé in 1685. The following year, plump and pretty Mademoiselle de Blois married Philippe, duc de Chartres, the son of Louis’ brother Monsieur and his second wife, Liselotte, the Princess Palatine—much to Liselotte’s disgust. She wrote to her aunt Sophia, electress of Hanover, “Even if the Duc du Maine were not the child of a double adultery but a true prince, I would not like him for a son-in-law, nor his sister for a daughter-in-law, for he is dreadfully ugly and lame and has other bad qualities to boot, stingy as the devil and without kindness. His sister, it is true, is rather kind…. But most of all…they are…the children of the most wicked and desperate woman on earth…whenever I see these bastards, my blood boils over.”

Madame de Montespan wasn’t even invited to her youngest daughter’s wedding; she read about the event in the
Mercure Galant
, the popular gossip magazine. But it was the ultimate snub to later be told that Mademoiselle de Blois would be placed with a tutor and that Louis intended to bring their youngest child, the comte de Toulouse,
to the front with him. With her last two children taken from her, Athénaïs no longer felt necessary at court. Her pride wounded, she requested the king’s permission to retire to a convent. He called her bluff, at which point she backpedaled and admitted that she had no intention of making a permanent exit from court. She went to Clagny instead, and her ungrateful eldest son, the duc du Maine, who was going to move into her apartments at Versailles, helped her pack—by cruelly tossing her furniture and other possessions out of the windows. Eventually the cowardly and arrogant duc would even deprive his mother of Clagny, demanding it as a wedding gift, despite the fact that Louis had promised it to her for life.

In 1691, on March 15, Athénaïs did make her genuine departure from court, remarking to her old enemy Bishop Bossuet that he could finally deliver her eulogy. “
Yes
, Madame la Marquise,” Bossuet agreed. “The King no longer loves you, you are as good as dead.”