The Hurlyburly's Husband (19 page)

‘For I am filled with dreams, alone in my bed. I fear the spirits, since my maman died.’

Montespan did not know what to say. Dorothée, who was more sensitive than she might have appeared, broke the silence by offering breakfast to the child – she was so thin – but she refused.

‘No, I am not hungry.’

‘But you must eat – it’s no laughing matter; you must look at the clock face on the church tower if you are hungry, and when it tells you that eight or nine hours have passed since last you ate, then eat a good soup, take the clock’s word for it, and you will begin to feel better.’

The two girls left the room, closing the door behind them. Louis-Henri took up his pose again and peered pensively at his letter.

Our little girl is so thin, and she is exceeding weak. I would like her to drink milk, as the most beneficial of remedies, but she is so greatly averse to it that I hardly dare suggest it. She often suffers from lethargy and weariness, and loses her voice. I believe you would have reason to complain of me if I were not to let you know that her illness is serious. All the more so, as it has been thus for years, and this length of time is much to be feared unless she can find your gentle presence beside her again, which would keep her from being devoured by sorrow.

And I no longer condemn your behaviour; each of us seeks his own salvation. But assuredly I shall not find bliss through the path you take. Cast off the ambition with which they have cloaked you there, and you may not be as unhappy as you might think, and I am certain, my lady, that when disappointment sends you running into my arms, your love shall return.

This most passionate of husbands continues to adore you.

Louis-Henri de Pardaillan

Marquis de Montespan

A separated albeit inseparable husband

The cuckold slipped his folded missive into an envelope and was about to seal it when the painter from Montlhéry advised him, ‘If the letter is for your wife, and you send it together with my painting, it’s pointless to close the envelope. At the palace, letters are inspected by the King’s “black cabinet” and they will intercept your words.’

‘Ah, you’re right,’ conceded Louis-Henri.

So the marquis, with an insolence and pride that were inversely proportional to his reduced fortune, wrote on the back of the envelope:

To all those bitches and bastards in His Majesty’s entourage who find cause for amusement in my correspondence!

That day in December 1669 was one to remember. Louis-Antoine, the little Marquis d’Antin, was riding an English mare for the first time – an old, calm mount that ambled slowly across the cobblestones in the courtyard. The father admired his son’s bearing, the instinctive way he sat on the horse. Marie-Christine by contrast, was terrified of horses.

‘I’ve never seen a child sit better in a saddle, his body straight and his legs positioned as if he’d had instruction. Look at that, Cartet. Doesn’t he look the proper horseman?’

The steward, who was at the top of a ladder leaning against the chateau’s red entrance gate, finished working loose some bricks that he dropped on the ground, then turned to watch the marquis’s son. As he turned back to the gate, he cried, ‘Upon my word, I can see a carriage approaching, Captain. You are to have a visitor. There are guards walking alongside. I think they are dragoons.’ ‘Dragoons?’

Montespan was pleased to have visitors; they distracted him from the boredom of his isolated marquisate, and sometimes brought him news of other provinces and even of court, but why should there be dragoons alongside that coach? He went up to the gate, whilst more bricks rained down. The carriage stopped outside the chateau and a gentleman stepped out, peering at the steward on his ladder.

‘Are you doing repairs, Marquis?’

‘We are raising the roof of the entrance. For my horns.’

‘Ah, still at it with your Gascon tricks? Such poor taste …’

An anxious woman, taking weary little steps, came to join them. It was Louis-Henri’s mother; the visitor greeted her. ‘Good day, Madame. How are you?’ Chrestienne de Zamet had aged greatly since her son’s return to Bonnefont the previous year, and she had a bad cough, but she had not lost her wit.

‘It is said one should not speak of one’s troubles – nor of one’s children!’

‘Are you poorly? Are you taking care of yourself?’

‘I am taking a goodly number of remedies, it would be easier to count the grains of sand on the beach. To what do we owe the honour of your visit, Monsieur, representing as you do His Majesty in Guyenne?’

The intendant was wearing robes, and gloves of Point d’Angleterre lace. He had a small, ugly face, and a great deal of hair, which spared him the need for a wig. From his breath it was obvious that he had ruined his stomach through an excessive fondness for vinegar. He said to Louis-Henri, ‘Bring all your people together in one room. I must speak to you in their presence.’

‘Indeed?’

Montespan gave a short whistle through his fingers. ‘Cartet, come down!’ Then he called, ‘Madame Larivière! Dorothée!’ The cook came out into the courtyard with a cloth in her hands, and Marie-Christine’s playmate opened a window on the first floor. ‘Coming!’ They joined the marquis and Chrestienne de Zamet in the old guardroom. The intendant looked at Louis-Henri in astonishment. ‘Is that all? Don’t you have any other servants?’

‘I am somewhat short of money, Monsieur Macqueron … And when my father passed away, this spring in Toulouse, the estate was so burdened with debts, because he lent me so much, that in the end I have had to renounce it.’

‘You won’t make me weep over the state of your fortune, Marquis. None other I know on earth could so easily become exceedingly rich.’

A clerk stood by prepared to take notes. Outside, the dragoons were posted around the chateau walls and in the grounds to prevent anyone from leaving, but the intendant seemed discomfited. He grimaced, then asked, ‘Monsieur de Montespan, at the time of the War of Devolution, did you have a dalliance with a young brunette from these parts with shining eyes and hot blood, a lass you are reputed to have abducted and dressed as a soldier in order to introduce her into your company and have her under your thumb? The family of the abducted woman have filed a complaint against you.’

‘What?’

‘There is yet another charge against you. You are accused of threatening to attack a convent in order to abduct a pretty nun, a sort of amorous dragonnade, if you like…’

Montespan spluttered in protest.

‘If these facts are shown to be true, you risk life imprisonment in the dungeon at Pignerol.’

‘It’s all false, utterly false! Oh, God’s teeth!’ exclaimed the marquis indignantly. ‘I am not interested in that sort of trickery outside marriage. I have never been one of those charmers, those so-called “lovers of the eleven thousand virgins”. Never! A well-blessed husband like myself?’

Louis-Henri’s feverish mother immediately came to her child’s defence.

‘My boy is honest, Monsieur Macqueron, and civil, and is known for his high moral standards.’

‘Madame, a major who was posted outside Puigcerdá, a libertine duc who is delighted by this story, has accused your son.’

‘Such a charitable instinct to wish wounds and gashes upon one’s fellows is exceeding common in the army,’ said Cartet.

The intendant of Guyenne did indeed have his doubts. In the marquis’s frank gaze he detected real stupefaction, which he had expected. From his robes he took a letter sealed in yellow (for judicial matters). From the colour of the wax, Montespan suspected that the missive would also contain further barbs. Macqueron continued, ‘Two months ago, a special envoy from Louvois brought me a letter which he asked me to read in his presence. I was much surprised, but as I feared some shady mischief, I sought to protect myself and used the pretext of going to fetch my spectacles from the adjacent office. There I ordered my clerk to stand right next to the door and to listen and write down what I was about to say out loud to the envoy. And this is what I read,’ he concluded, handing a copy of his letter to the marquis, who unfolded it and read.

21 September 1669

To Macqueron, Intendant of Guyenne

Have the captain, the Marquis de Montespan, convicted of some offence in order to try, through whatever means available, to implicate him in a matter that will appear to be of a legal nature.

If you can contrive to have him strongly accused so that the Sovereign Council will have the wherewithal to hand down a severe sentence, that would be a good thing indeed. You may suspect the grounds thereof if you are at all acquainted with what is happening in this place.

Pray omit nothing that might ensure a successful conclusion to what I desire at this time, and give me news of it every day by separate letter in your hand, returning this one to me.

Louvois

Montespan was stunned. He echoed the last words of the letter.

‘“… returning this one to me …” He did not want his perfidy to remain in the archives …’

‘Whereas I,’ said the intendant, ‘insisted on having this copy to absolve myself of responsibility, by leaving to posterity proof of the minister and the King’s intervention.’

The enormous flue fireplace in the old guardroom drew poorly and the room was smoky. The marquis didn’t feel well, his head was spinning. He was nauseous and opened a window wide, despite the fact that it was winter. In the courtyard by the horned carriage now covered in wisteria, Louis-Antoine was doing exercises on a pommel horse. The cuckold turned back to the room. Matters could not be clearer: from being quite well-disposed towards him and offering him plenty of gold, His Majesty’s hand had turned to persecution. The marquis was to be accused of as many wrongs as possible, even if they had to be invented, and the Gascon’s image of model spouse had to be sullied. The rebel had to be brought to ruin by means ‘that will appear to be of a legal nature’: so it was written in the letter.

‘They are conspiring to find a way to get rid of me once and for all, falsifying the facts and accusing me of a crime punishable by life imprisonment …’

A long silence reigned in the hall until Macqueron resumed his story.

‘To begin with, I obeyed Louvois’s instructions most tamely, and ordered an investigation against you, and I demanded that a number of stories be constructed that would implicate you and seem plausible before a tribunal, even if they required false testimony. But now I have my scruples, this weighs upon my conscience …’

‘It does not seem to bother them at Versailles, “if you are at all acquainted with what is happening in this place”.’

‘Before I look for a pretext to try and avoid the Sovereign Council, which would sentence you, I would like first of all to be absolutely certain of the veracity of your good behaviour. That is why I wish to question your people in your presence.’

‘Pray do so,’ replied Montespan, relieved.

The intendant of Guyenne addressed Dorothée first of all.

‘Has the marquis always behaved well towards you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Has he ever made any inappropriate gestures towards your person, or said anything of a somewhat…’

‘Oh, no, sir!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘If anything has happened, or you have seen anything that seemed a bit suspicious, you must tell me. You know it is a mortal sin to lie to a man of the law?’

‘I am not lying, Monsieur.’

The intendant’s gaze circled slowly around the group, passing like a veil over the steward with his dagger-hilt moustache and his air of a forest brigand, and came to rest upon the marquis’s mother. ‘Have you nothing to reveal to me, Madame?’

‘From the moment my son met the woman who would become his wife, he has adored none but her. All other female forms are invisible to him. A mother knows such things.’

Macqueron’s gaze narrowed upon Madame Larivière, who bowed her head before the man of law. This aroused his concern. ‘Might Monsieur le marquis not be as virtuous as his mother claims? For example, with yourself, perhaps …?’

‘No, not with me, but with the steward – sometimes they have a romp together.’

‘What?!’

Cartet’s very moustache lost its curl. Montespan could not believe his ears. Chrestienne de Zamet staggered as if she had been struck in the head. Dorothée rushed to bring her over a chair. Arrogantly, the cook stood tall before her master.

‘Begging your pardon, Monsieur, but I did see you one night wanting to have your way with Cartet. And, Marquis, I can’t get it out of my head! When you know full well what ties there be binding me to him!’

The intendant was enthralled. ‘Go on …’

‘The steward was here in a wedding gown, open at the back, his buttocks to the four winds, and behind him was the marquis, his breeches round his knees, wanting to … you know, like the Chevalier de Lorraine with Monsieur, the King’s brother…’

‘The Italian vice …’

‘Exactly!’

Macqueron turned to a crestfallen Montespan.

‘Thus, you were giving lessons in conjugal fidelity to His Majesty … Pope Innocent XI was determined to defend your cause and not yield – the matter was leading to a schism. But if you were sodomising your steward, that changes everything.’

‘And not just once!’ said Madame Larivière, reiterating her attack. ‘As far as I can tell, it happened before, outside Puigcerdá, when Cartet was a sergeant, and that is why I reckon this business about an abducted girl and a nun, I don’t know … but it would not surprise me in the least!’

The cuckold felt as if he were falling into an abyss. He had not expected such a thing! His mother was paler than ever, as if she had been bled of two pints of blood, and now she ordered him to explain. ‘Is it true? Is it true, Louis-Henri?’

The marquis hardly knew what to reply, stammering, ‘I … I was drunk, but otherwise, never, never…’

‘Never what?’ said the cook hotly. ‘You lived for at least a month in a brothel behind Place de Grève! Were you drunk then, too?’

‘Frequenting prostitutes!’ said Macqueron, astonished.