Today these apartments, occupied by Madame de Maintenon for thirty years with certain modifications and adaptations, still have a poky feel.
This did not mean that Françoise never took Communion at all during this period; it was as ever the public nature of Easter which was the issue: to ‘make one's Easter’ when the whole world knew that adultery was being committed (by the King) or the lesser sin of fornication (by the widowed Françoise).
It would be wrong in this context to see today's Versailles, a tourist mecca, a maelstrom of different races, as representing something totally alien to the Versailles of the seventeenth century. Enormous crowds of carriages and other horse-drawn vehicles once thronged the areas which are now car-parks and bus-parks; as to race, Asiatic princes paid ceremonial visits and Africans were popular as pages and guards, as can be seen from the portraits of the period.
PART THREE
Autumn
CHAPTER 11
The King's Need
This is not the time to leave the King; he has need of you.
– Duc de La Rochefoucauld to Madame de Maintenon, August 1683
The death of Queen Marie-Thérèse at the end of July 1683 plunged Louis XIV into an inner crisis. It was generally assumed by his counsellors and courtiers that the King would marry again: his bride would be once more some great princess. That is what kings did, again and again if their wives persisted in dying, as happened to many European monarchs.
And why not? On the eve of his forty-fifth birthday Louis was still a vigorous man. The golden looks of his youth had faded: the beautiful hair that the Grande Mademoiselle had once admired had begun to recede in his thirties and by now he was in effect bald, relying on the massively full and curly wigs depicted in his state portraits. The King's mouth had begun to turn down from the Pan-like smile of his youth, his nose became more pronounced. The fine legs and feet, which like his hair had been so much admired as he danced heroic roles in the Court Ballet, were sometimes tortured with gout.
He was beginning to put on weight: which was hardly surprising considering his enormous appetite, the despair of those eating with him who were expected to match it with their own. Great piles of game birds were consumed, flagons of wine, starting early in the day and continuing to late-night suppers which would not have disgraced Rabelais's giant Gargantua; for night-time consumption, another fowl and more liquid refreshment were provided. Liselotte described how she had often seen the King devour a whole pheasant and a partridge after four plates of different kinds of soup, ‘a large dish of salad, two great slices of ham, mutton served with gravy and garlic, a plate of sweet cakes and, on top of that, fruit and hard-boiled eggs’.1*
Yet if Louis no longer astonished onlookers with his godlike beauty, his sheer presence commanded them: ‘that secret force of royal majesty'. And then there was his voice, the unmistakable voice of a King, seldom raised, expecting always to be obeyed. One veteran officer who was asking for a favour began to shake at the sound of his sovereign's voice and stammered out: ‘Sire, I did not tremble like this in front of your enemies.'2 As for Louis's gaze, the lively look of the mischievous boy had become the penetrating stare of the great King, with his slanting dark eyes which had something quasi-oriental about them.
Certainly there was still much about Louis XIV to make a princess content, to quote that wistful comment Françoise had made about Marie-Thérèse's choice of husband all those years ago at her official entry into Paris. His energies were undiminished. Despite his gout, the King still went shooting and hunting even if he sometimes used a convenient little carriage. His workload was as heavy as ever, and on the other side of the coin the Fêtes at Versailles were still glorious. In 1684 Mansart would add the fabulous Hall of Mirrors to the state apartments. And besides all of this, the new bride of Louis XIV would be Queen of France.
Princesses of an appropriate age and status were not wanting: a Tuscan princess perhaps, in order to wield further influence in central Italy? Then there was the Infanta of Portugal: a Portuguese alliance always made good sense to balance the power of her mighty neighbour Spain on the Iberian peninsula. Liselotte's aunt Sophia Electress of Hanover nourished hopes that another German princess might join Liselotte herself and the Dauphine Marianne-Victoire at the French court: she had in mind her fifteen-year-old daughter Sophia-Charlotte, known as Figuelotte. Technically Figuelotte was a Protestant (as Liselotte had been), but Sophie delayed her daughter's Protestant Confirmation just in case another rapid conversion might be needed…3
As for Figuelotte, already a sensible girl, she was definitely up for the throne of France. There might be constraints to the position, but she would face constraints wherever she went; at least with Louis XIV ‘it would be worth it'.* In spite of this sporting attitude on the part of the young Protestant Princess, the Catholic Portuguese Infanta remained the front runner – so far as the world knew. It was not until late November that the French Ambassador was told to let trie Queen of Portugal down lightly:4 there would be no marriage of the Sun King with the Portuguese Princess, thirty years his junior.
What no one outside a very small circle knew about in the high summer of 1683 was that crisis which the King first faced, and then resolved. A meeting of the Council held on 13 August decided, according to the report at supper, that second marriages were unfortunate.5 The next year the sentiment (whether the Council's or the King's) was given emblematic significance. The Queen's apartments at Versailles were carved up, much of the space being taken by the King. In Versailles terms it was now quite obvious that there would be no Queen, since there were no Queen's apartments.
The ostensible reasons for the decision were twofold. First there was the present burgeoning royal family, coupled with the Dauphine's new, healthy pregnancy (she would deliver a second prince, the Duc d'Anjou, in December). Second, there was the awful example of past family squabbles. The rebellious behaviour of Louis's uncle Gaston d'Orléans had caused much pain, while the late Queen had disliked her stepmother, Philip's second wife, and felt nothing but hostility for her half-brother. A new young Queen of France would inevitably mean a new young family: Louis had after all begotten a child by Angélique de Fontanges only recently. These children would be half-siblings, possibly subversive half-siblings, to the Dauphin now in his twenties. Was that really welcome to a King who had grown up in the dreaded atmosphere of family dispute?
All this was true enough in dynastic terms. But one doubts whether Louis XIV would really have taken the unconventional step – by royal standards – of remaining a public widower if he had not had a strong private motive to do so. This motive concerned his salvation, that project which could at last be brought to a successful conclusion if he secretly married his best friend and now mistress, Françoise de Maintenon.
These secret unions, known as morganatic marriages, were in fact a feature of the period: they concerned the Church and not the state and were not registered. A marriage in a chapel, performed by the clergy with witnesses, sufficed, although the union brought with it no official position (that of Queen of France in this case). In 1665 for example George William Duke of Celle promised lifelong fidelity to his adored ‘wife in the eyes of God', the lower-ranking Eléanore d'Olbreuse.* Another way of describing such an alliance – except that an alliance in the diplomatic sense was exactly what it was not – was as a ‘marriage of conscience.’7 For of course both parties concerned would be in a state of grace for the future, where the Church was concerned, even if the lack of registration made the ceremony invalid in the civil sense. Children of morganatic unions were not able to inherit kingdoms or princedoms: but in the case of Françoise, now nearly forty-five, the question of children never seems to have featured at any point in her career.
The evidence of the rushed, hushed, anxious then ecstatic correspondence of Françoise at this point is that the King did not reach his decision in favour of the ‘project of salvation' at once. This must mean that the Sun King took time to abandon the public value
s in which he had been raised, which would have made marriage to a woman of minor birth, a few years older than himself, widow of a dubious artist, an unthinkable proposition. He was for example declining to award the court the focal point of a new Queen; a role which he took extremely seriously, as we have seen, following the early example of his mother.
According to custom the King of France could not remain in the presence of death: following the demise of Marie-Thérèse, Louis went to Saint-Cloud. But Françoise stayed at Versailles. Madame Now, hitherto his constant companion for advice, solace and encouragement, quite apart from the lighter pleasures, was scrupulous enough in her conscience and careful enough of her reputation to know that her already equivocal position had been rendered still more precarious.
The idea that on her deathbed Marie-Thérèse passed a diamond ring as a token of her approval of Françoise as her successor is certainly apocryphal, being quite out of character for a great Spanish princess who was in any case dying in agonies.8 What was true was that Marie-Thérèse had had a satisfyingly tranquil relationship with Madame Now during her lifetime, Françoise being careful to show the greatest respect at all times; the previous autumn Marie-Thérèse had bestowed her own portrait set in diamonds upon her, a traditional sign of exceptional royal favour. But Marie-Thérèse was gone, and with her the illusion of respectability.
It was at this moment that Louis's friend and contemporary, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, son of the author, took a fateful decision. He had been Grand Master of the Royal Wardrobe (an intimate appointment) as well as Grand Hunter (a convivial one) for the last ten years. No one knew the King better in all his moods of melancholy and celebration, the former suppressed by his formidable self-control, the latter by his sense of his own dignity.
‘This is not the time to leave the King,' said the Duc to Françoise, ‘he has need of you.' So Madame de Maintenon travelled after Louis to Saint-Cloud. When he went on to Fontainebleau, she joined him there too. Perhaps this ancient and romantic château was the appropriate setting for the critical discussions which now passed between the couple. Fontainebleau was one of the few royal residences where Louis XIV had not so far cast his builder's eye, and remained much as he had inherited it. Grandly old-fashioned, not very large, quite dark with chimneys that smoked, it served as a kind of periodic retreat, especially for the hunting seasons with its convenient and beautiful forest. The transient nature of royal occupation was emphasised by the fact that when the court was away – most of the year – the children of the nearby villagers loved to bathe in the fountains of the château while their mothers did the laundry there, and their animals grazed on the terraces.9
In the forest where the young Louis had once ridden with Marie Mancini and Henriette-Anne, Françoise now took her walks in a state of constant agitation, accompanied by her long-time friend the Marquise de Montchevreuil, an unsmiling woman so devout that she was described as putting the most pious off religion. This frenzy on the part of Françoise, the violent uncertainty of her state – her thoughts, her fears, her hopes – was recalled later by Marguerite de Caylus, then twelve years old, whom Françoise had ‘adopted’ three years earlier.10
It is clear from her correspondence that Françoise at this point was still quite uncertain about the course the King would take: given their closeness, this makes it likely that Louis himself was uncertain too. On 18 August Françoise asked her friend Madame de Brinon to relate what people were saying on the subject (a reference to the Infanta of Portugal). On 22 August she hoped Madame de Brinon would go and see Madeleine de Scudéry, now at quite an advanced age but still at the centre of polite gossip, and ‘send me all you hear that is good or bad'.
On 22 August Madame de Maintenon in her cautious way was still ridiculing all the gossip about the ‘Louis and Françoise' affair. It was not until 19 September that Françoise wrote to her director of conscience: ‘My perturbations are over. And I am in a state of peace, which I will take much more pleasure in telling you about than the troubles we used to discuss between ourselves. Don't forget me before God for I have a great need of strength to make good use of my happiness.’11
The crucial decision seems to have been taken by the King in the first week of September. A riding accident on 2 September, in which his shoulder was feared broken but was actually dislocated, may have played its part. This was not so much because it gave Françoise an opportunity to display womanly tenderness (Louis was surely convinced of that already, since it was the quality which had first attracted him about her in the ménage of the rue de Vaugirard) but because it anchored the King himself, kept him from returning to Versailles for a month, and thus enforced upon him a period of proper reflection. The King loved Françoise and he did not after all imagine that he would fall in love again. He was wrong about that, but in 1683 could hardly have imagined the circumstances of his last great passion. When the twentieth anniversary of his mother's death was solemnly celebrated in January 1686, Louis could feel that her tears and prayers for his salvation had not been in vain.12
So when did this marriage, which was never officially announced to the world and for which no direct documentary evidence exists, take place? For there can be little doubt that it did take place, although to the end of her life Françoise would never directly confirm it even to her most loyal acolytes.13 The preponderance of historical opinion goes for the night of 9–10 October, with the old chapel at Versailles, subsequently rebuilt, as the most likely venue. It would have been held late at night, for the sake of discretion, and was probably performed by the Archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Champvallon, with the curé of Versailles as another possibility. If it is known, as one source suggests, that green vestments were used, that means that it must have taken place on a weekday between Pentecost and the First Sunday in Advent. The ever-discreet Bontemps would have arranged everything and may in addition have acted as a witness, along with Françoise's faithful attendant since her widowhood, Nanon Balbien. Other potential witnesses, of less intimate standing, were the King's new supreme minister since the death of Colbert in September, the Marquis de Louvois, and the Marquis de Montchevreuil, a decent if rather stupid fellow, husband of Françoise's tight-lipped friend.
Gossip spread across Europe on the subject of the marriage, and by 1686 a song was being sung contrasting the reputation of Françoise's old friend the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos with that of the virtuous Roman wife Lucrece: ‘Whether she's wife or mistress / Whether Ninon or Lucrece / I couldn't care less.' As for the King who ‘from lover has become husband / He does what one does at his age'. In 1687, according to Liselotte, few people at court doubted that the couple were married; though she personally found it hard to believe ‘so long as there has been no official announcement'. Being Liselotte, she could not resist adding a swipe at the morals of the French court: ‘If they were married their love would hardly be as strong as it is. But perhaps secrecy adds a spice not enjoyed by people in official wedlock.' The following year Liselotte, with her strong sense of rank, was still perplexed by the lack of official announcement (she should not have grumbled because it enabled her to continue to take precedence over ‘the old woman'). But Madame had to admit that Louis had never felt ‘such passion for any mistress as he does for this one'.14
Françoise had her own ideas of how her position should be handled. She refused for example to take the post of Dame d'Honneur to the Dauphine, the senior female appointment at court, when the Duchesse de Richelieu died, despite the pleas of Marianne-Victoire. (The latter had seen the light: when she arrived in France she had displayed hostility to Françoise, encouraged by her husband; now she realised her mistake.) This self-denial was said to be ‘very generous and noble behaviour' on Françoise's part; but in truth she did not want to be seen to tread the path of Athénaïs, the mistress created Superintendent of the Queen's Household. On the other hand, by 1692 Françoise was enjoying the right to visit enclosed convents, theoretically exercised only by the Queens of France. She also had the
crucial privilege of sitting down in royalty's presence – always a vital clue to status at Versailles.
The real proof of the marriage lay, however, in the attitude of the clergy, above all that of the Holy See. In order that Françoise should maintain her position as a woman of virtue, it was necessary that the Pope should be informed privately of the marriage. This had probably happened by 1685. Certainly the Papacy awarded her every respect, which would hardly have been the case if she had continued simply as the mistress or the so-called best friend of the King. A lapis lazuli crown for a statue of the Virgin and a gold medal were among the presents sent from Rome to Françoise.15
As the years passed, there were clues, slips of the pen or of etiquette, which would admit of no other solution than marriage between the two of them. The drunken reference of the dissolute Charles d'Aubigné to his royal ‘brother-in-law' should not be counted as evidence, since Charles liked to embarrass when he could and certainly had no privileged information. But there was the letter of the Abbé Godet des Marais, Françoise's director of conscience following Gobelin, who referred to her as ‘a woman occupied with the glory of her husband (italics added). And there was the more ribald incident when Monsieur happened upon his brother alone with Françoise on a bed with the covers drawn back because of the heat (he was taking medicine rather than making love). The King merely laughed and said: ‘In the condition in which you see me with Madame de Maintenon, you can imagine what she is to me.'16
One of the clear indications Louis XIV had given that there would be no new official Queen of France was his transformation of his late wife's living quarters. Now Madame de Maintenon's own apartments were adapted from time to time to suit her new status – whatever it was – and she was granted a proper reception room (and a better garde-robe) so that the King could enjoy the domesticity he wanted. Instructions for redecoration were mixed up with orders for the King's own apartments, and those of the Dauphin and Dauphine. But despite the heavy damask in the various rooms, red, green, crimson and gold, on seats, beds and tables as well as walls, they could never be mistaken for the apartments of a Queen. Only the bed in the alcove with its four bouquets of feathers waving above had something quasi-royal about it.17