Love And Louis XIV: The Women In The Life Of The Sun King Part 8

Nevertheless Francoise's denunciations of court life cannot altogether obliterate the fact that she did in some way seek out her destiny. The displacement of Athenais, however religiously motivated, was definitely to the advantage of Francoise. This is not to say that Francoise bore any resemblance to the old wh.o.r.e, strumpet, garbage or ordure of Liselotte's vulgar terminology. It was a long journey from little Bignette chasing the turkeys to the Marquise de Maintenon, 'glorious ... Protectress of the Realm', as the soldiers addressed her in 1705. No one achieves such a remarkable position as Francoise did, holding it for over twenty years, without some streak of ambition even if the ambition was only to save the King's soul.

How amusing to find the lovely, amoral Madame de Pompadour in the reign of Louis XV, whose hold over the King was definitely no aid to his salvation, deciding to emulate the pious Madame de Maintenon! 'If the Queen were to disappear,' the King would want 'to buy peace for his conscience' like his great-grandfather, wrote the Austrian Amba.s.sador: 'the plan of the marquise is formed on the example of Madame de Maintenon.' The Pompadour proceeded to order a lot of religious paintings from the sensuous Boucher in order to bolster her claims to be a holy 'secret wife'.8 So much for human plans: in the event it was not Queen Maria Leczinska but the Pompadour who died ... So much for human plans: in the event it was not Queen Maria Leczinska but the Pompadour who died ...

Now Francoise, as the King's secret wife, was left with the problem of amusing him. The coming of little Adelaide of Savoy into the life of Louis XIV, solving the problem at a stroke with her cute childish ways, was therefore the greatest piece of luck for both Louis and Francoise. Henceforward all the King's hopes and affections were utterly focused on this small, sprightly creature; and since she was the future Queen of France, he could feel it was his absolute duty to do so.

Louis's generosity and courtesy to women, his enjoyment of their company outside the bedroom, has been stressed throughout this book. He loved his daughters and spoiled them; he loved his granddaughters too. But there was also a ruthless side to his nature where women were concerned royal women. Liselotte was Condemned to witness the destruction of her homeland: her own royal rights were invoked to press the claims of France, and she found it infinitely distressing. Yet Louis reacted to her grief with irritation; such feelings of chagrin were not permitted at Versailles. Marie-Louise d'Orleans was sent briskly off to Spain to marry the appalling Carlos II in spite of her tearful pleas. 'Farewell. For ever,' was the reaction of Louis XIV. It was a fate which subsequently caused Liselotte to exclaim that being a queen was hard anywhere, but to be the Queen in Spain is surely worse than anywhere else'.9 Even the beloved Adelaide incurred her grandfather's resentment when she displayed something less than her usual gaiety at the denigrations of her husband. Yet these experiences, for better or for worse, were part of the lives of royalty at the time, not only for women: arguably Berry was just as badly treated in not being allowed to separate from the incontinent Marie-elisabeth. And one should balance Louis XIV's tenderness towards the deposed Queen Mary Beatrice not always to the advantage of France against his ruthlessness towards Marie-Louise. Even the beloved Adelaide incurred her grandfather's resentment when she displayed something less than her usual gaiety at the denigrations of her husband. Yet these experiences, for better or for worse, were part of the lives of royalty at the time, not only for women: arguably Berry was just as badly treated in not being allowed to separate from the incontinent Marie-elisabeth. And one should balance Louis XIV's tenderness towards the deposed Queen Mary Beatrice not always to the advantage of France against his ruthlessness towards Marie-Louise.

This sense of order makes Louis's firm choice of Madame de Maintenon as his second, if secret, spouse all the more remarkable. She shone no glory on him; rather to the contrary, her early a.s.sociation with Scarron was considered disreputable. Not only Liselotte but the satirists lamented that she was a n.o.body in hierarchical terms, and older than the King. But the King chose her and kept to her. In his forties, thanks to the lucky in these terms death of Marie-Therese, he selected the kind of woman, in nature if not rank, that his mother had been, and he stuck to her. Good women in the moral sense were always fascinating to Louis XIV, and for all his (justified) reputation for promiscuity in youth and the establishment of his 'harem' as he reached thirty, one notes that he spent at least half of his seventy-seven-odd years in their company.

'Greatness of birth and the advantages bestowed by wealth and by nature should provide all the elements of a happy life,' wrote Louis's first cousin the Grande Mademoiselle in her final months. 'But experience should have taught us that there are many people who have had all these things who are not happy.' She added: the good moments arrive but they do not last. Louis XIV certainly had a happier life in emotional terms than the Grande Mademoiselle whose ill-conceived but valiant efforts to make a late marriage to Lauzun he had quashed (another example of his ruthless determination where dynastic matters were concerned). It would be fair to say that most of the happiest moments of his life were a.s.sociated with women, whether enjoying Anne of Austria's marble bath in the Louvre, riding romantically with Marie Mancini or Louise when he was young, throwing away the sword that dared to hurt Marie's hand, lending his own hat to put on Louise's golden curls, amusing himself at summer nights of revelry with Henriette-Anne or travelling with her granddaughter Adelaide round the gardens of Versailles in a little pony cart when he was old.

For the latter attachment he paid a terrible price: the Sun King who would not let there be clouds in his presence, forbidding mourning as a matter of principle, was brought to acknowledge his own impotence in the face of heaven's decrees and 'submit'. In the dignity of this grief and the stoicism of his death, Louis XIV was ent.i.tled to call himself an honnete homme, honnete homme, a civilised man, that ultimate term of seventeenth-century praise. a civilised man, that ultimate term of seventeenth-century praise.

We must also remember that in the century when Louis XIV chose the sun as his symbol 'the most vigorous and the most splendid image of a great monarch' one of the declared attributes of the sun was 'the light which it s.h.i.+nes on those other stars which surround it like a court'. And those stars in their turn, the women in his life, lit up the court of the Sun King.

* This was no Henry VIII, the fate of whose six wives is traditionally recorded as 'Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.' With Louis XIV there were no divorces and certainly no decapitations: the mistresses who abandoned the court were not compelled to do so.* It was appropriate that in the mid-nineteenth century Flaubert had Madame Bovary turn to La Valliere for inspiration when she attempted to recover her faith after being abandoned by her lover: 'in the pride of her G.o.dliness, Emma compared herself with the great ladies of old, they whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La Valliere, those who ... shed at the feet of Christ the tears of a heart wounded by the world.'3