Part 8 (1/2)
CHAPTER V
MISTRESSES AND WIVES OF LOUIS XIV
The story of the wives and mistresses of Louis XIV., embraces that which is most dramatic morally (or immorally dramatic) in the history of French women. The record of the eighteenth century heroines is essentially a tragic one, while that of those of the previous century is essentially dramatic in its sadness, remorse, and repentance.
The mistress, as a rule, was unhappy; there were few months during the period of her glory, in which she was entirely free from anxiety or in which her conscience was at rest. Mme. de Montespan ”was for so many years the sick nurse of a soul worn out with pride, pa.s.sion, and glory.” Mme. de Maintenon wrote to one of her friends: ”Why cannot I give you my experience? Why cannot I make you comprehend the ennui which devours the great, and the troubles that fill their days? Do you not see that I am dying of sadness, in a fortune the vastness of which could not be easily imagined? I have been young and pretty; I have enjoyed pleasures; I have spent years in intellectual intercourse; I have attained favor; and I protest to you, my dear child, that all such conditions leave a frightful void.” She said, also, to her brother, Count d'Aubigne: ”I can hold out no longer; I would like to be dead.” It was she too, who, after her successes, made her confession thus: ”One atones heavily for the pleasures and intoxications of youth. I find, in looking back at my life, that since the age of twenty-two--which was the beginning of my fortune--I have not had a moment free from sufferings which have constantly increased.”
M. Saint-Amand gives a description of the women of Louis XV. which well applies to those of his predecessor: ”These pretended mistresses, who, in reality, are only slaves, seem to present themselves, one after the other, like humble penitents who come to make their apologies to history, and, like the primitive Christians, to reveal publicly the miseries, vexations, and remorses of their souls. They tell us to what their doleful successes amounted: even while their triumphal chariot made its way through a crowd of flatterers, their consciences hissed cruel accusations into their ears; like actresses before a whimsical and variable public, they were always afraid that the applause might change into an uproar, and it was with terror underlying their apparent coolness that they continued to play their sorry part.... If among these mistresses of the king there were a single one who had enjoyed her shameful triumphs in peace, who had called herself happy in the midst of her dearly bought luxury and splendor, one might have concluded that, from a merely human point of view, it is possible to find happiness in vice. But, no--there is not even one!” Ma.s.sillon, the great preacher of truth and morality, said: ”The worm of conscience is not dead; it is only benumbed. The alienated reason presently returns, bringing with it bitter troubles, gloomy thoughts, and cruel anxieties”--a true picture of every mistress.
The remarkable power and influence of these women, the love and adoration accorded them, ceased with their death; the memory of them did not survive overnight. When, during a terrible storm, the remains of the glorious Mme. de Pompadour were being taken to Paris, the king, seeing the funeral cortege from his window, remarked: ”The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey.”
Each one of these powerful mistresses represents a complete epoch of society, morals, and customs. Mme. de Montespan--that woman whose very look meant fortune or disfavor--with all her wit and wealth, her magnificence and pomp and superb beauty--she, in all her splendor, is a type of the triumphant France, haughty, dictatorial, scornful and proud, licentious and decayed at the core. Voluptuousness and haughtiness were replaced by religiosity and repentance in Mme. de Maintenon, with her temperate character, consistency, and propriety.
The Regency was a period of scandal and wantonness, personified in the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry. The licentious and extravagant, yet brilliant and exquisite, frivolous but charming, intriguing and diplomatic, was represented by the talented and politically influential Mme. de Pompadour. Complete degeneracy, vice with all manner of disguise thrown off, adultery of the lowest order, were personified in the common Mme. du Barry, who might be cla.s.sed with Louise of Savoy of the sixteenth century, while Mme. de Pompadour might be compared with Diana of Poitiers.
In this period the queens of France were of little importance, being too timid and modest to a.s.sert their rights--a disposition which was due sometimes to their restricted youth, spent in Catholic countries, sometimes to a naturally una.s.suming and sensitive nature. To this rule Maria Theresa, the wife of Louis XIV., was no exception. She inherited her sweetness of disposition and her Christian character from her mother, Isabella of France, the daughter of Henry IV. and Marie de'
Medici. She was pure and candid; a type of irreproachable piety and goodness, of conjugal tenderness and maternal love; and recompensed outraged morality for all the false pride, selfish ambition, depravity, and scandals of court. She is conspicuous as a model wife, one that loved her husband, her family, and her children.
Around Maria Theresa may be grouped the n.o.ble and virtuous women of the court of Louis XIV., for she was to that age what Claude of France was under Francis I., Elizabeth of Austria under Charles V., Louise de Vaudemont under Henry III. However, in extolling these women, it must be remembered that they had not, as queens, the opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in debauchery, licentiousness, and intrigue, as had the mistresses of their husbands; they had no power, were not consulted on state or social affairs, and had granted to them only those favors to the conferring of which the mistresses did not object.
Maria Theresa was a perfect example of the self-sacrificing mother and devoted wife. Her feelings toward the king are best expressed by the Princesse Palatine: ”She had such an affection for the king that she tried to read in his eyes whatever would give him pleasure; providing he looked kindly at her, she was happy all day.” Mme. de Caylus wrote: ”That poor princess had such a dread of the king and such great natural timidity that she dared neither to speak to him nor to run the risk of a tete-a-tete with him. One day, I heard Mme. de Maintenon say that the king having sent for the queen, the latter requested her to go with her so that she might not appear alone in his presence: but that she (Mme. de Maintenon) conducted her only to the door of the room and there took the liberty of pus.h.i.+ng her so as to make her enter, and that she observed such a great trembling in her whole person that her very hands shook with fright.”
From about 1680, especially after the death of Mlle. de Fontanges, his last mistress, Louis XIV. began to look with disfavor upon the women of doubtful morality and to advance those who were noted for their conjugal fidelity. He became more attentive to the queen--a change of att.i.tude which was due partly to the influence of Mme. de Maintenon and partly to the fact that he was satiated with the excesses of his debauches, by which his physical system had been almost wrecked. He would not have dared to legitimatize his b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, had he not been so thoroughly idolized by his greatest heroes and most powerful ministers. As an ill.u.s.tration, it may be remarked that the Great Conde proposed the marriage of his son to the king's daughter by Mlle. de La Valliere.
The queen became so religious that she derived more enjoyment from praying at the convents or visiting hospitals than from remaining at her magnificent apartments. She waited upon the sick with her own hands and carried food to them; she never meddled in political affairs or took much interest in social functions.
Timidity, an instinctive shrinking from the slanders, calumnies, and intrigues of the court, appeared to be the most p.r.o.nounced characteristic of queens who seemed to believe themselves too inferior to their husbands to dare to offer any political counsel. While none of them were superior intellectually, they possessed dignity, good sense, and tact, ”a reverential feeling for the sanct.i.ty of religion and the majesty of the throne,” an admirable resignation, a painful docility and submission--qualities which might have been turned to the advantage of their owners and the state, had the former been more self-a.s.sertive.
The infidelities of their husbands caused the queen-consorts constant torture; they were forced to behold the kings' favorites becoming part of their own households and were compelled to endure the presence, as ladies in waiting, of those who, as their rivals, caused them to suffer all possible torments of jealousy and outraged conjugal love.
First among the mistresses of Louis XIV. was Mlle. de La Valliere, whom Sainte-Beuve mentions as the personification of the ideal of a lover, combining disinterestedness, fidelity, unique and delicate tenderness with a touching and sincere kindness. When, at the age of seventeen, she was presented at court, the king immediately selected her as one of his victims. Her beauty was so striking, of such an exquisitely tender type, that no woman actually rivalled her as queen of beauty. Distinguished by blond hair, dark blue eyes, a most sympathetic voice, and a complexion of rare whiteness mingled with red, she was guileless, animated, gentle, modest, graceful, unaffected, and ingenuous; although slightly lame, she was, by everyone, considered charming.
Mlle. de La Valliere was the mother of several children of whom Louis XIV. was the father. On realizing that she had rivals in the favor of the sovereign, she fled several times from the Tuileries to the convent; on her second return, the king, about to go to battle, recognized his daughter by her, whom he made a d.u.c.h.ess. Remorse overcame the mistress so deeply that she, for the third and final time, left court. Especially on the rise to power of Mme. de Montespan was she painfully humiliated, suffering the most intense pangs of conscience. The evening before her final departure to the convent, she dined with Mme. de Montespan, to drink ”the cup to the dregs and to enjoy the rejection of the world even to the last remains of its bitterness.”
Guizot describes this period most vividly: ”When Mme. de Montespan began to supplant her in the king's favor, the grief of Mlle. de La Valliere was so great that she thought she would die of it. Then she turned to G.o.d, penitent and in despair; twice she sought refuge in a convent at Chaillot. On leaving, she sent word to the king: 'After having lost the honor of your good graces I would have left the court sooner, if I could have prevailed upon myself never to see you again; but that weakness was so strong in me that hardly now am I capable of sacrificing it to G.o.d. After having given you all my youth, the remainder of my life is not too much for the care of my salvation.'”
The king still clung to her. ”He sent M. Colbert to beg her earnestly to come to Versailles that he might speak with her. M. Colbert escorted her thither and the king conversed for an hour with her and wept bitterly. Mme. de Montespan was there to meet her, with open arms and tears in her eyes.” ”It is all incomprehensible,” adds Mme. de Sevigne; ”some say that she will remain at Versailles and at court, others that she will return to Chaillot; we shall see.”
Mlle. de La Valliere remained three years at court, ”half penitent,”
she said, humbly, detained by the king's express wish, in consequence of the tempers and jealousies of Mme. de Montespan who felt herself judged and condemned by her rival's repentance. Attempts were made to turn Mlle. de La Valliere from her inclination for the Carmelites': ”Madame,” said Mme. Scarron to her, one day, ”here are you one blaze of gold; have you really considered that, before long, at the Carmelites' you will have to wear serge?” She, however, was not to be dissuaded from her determination and was already practising, in secret, the austerities of the convent. ”G.o.d has laid in this heart the foundation of great things,” said Bossuet, who supported her in her conflict; ”the world puts great hindrances in her way, and G.o.d great mercies; I have hopes that G.o.d will prevail; the uprightness of her heart will carry everything before it.”
”When I am in trouble at the Carmelites',” said Mlle. de La Valliere, as for the last time she quitted the court, ”I shall think of what those people have made me suffer.” ”The world itself makes us sick of the world,” said Bossuet in the sermon which he preached on the day she took the veil; ”its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness.
There is enough of bitterness, enough of injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of inconsistency and capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors--there is enough of it all, to disgust us.”
When, in 1675, she took the final vows, she cut off her beautiful hair and devoted herself to the church and to charity, receiving the veil from the queen, whose forgiveness she sought before entering the convent. The king showed himself to be such a jealous lover, that when Mlle. de La Valliere entirely abandoned him for G.o.d, he forgot her absolutely, never going to the convent to see her.
She was by far the most interesting and pathetic of the three mistresses of Louis XIV.; her heart was superior to that of either of her successors, though her mind was inferior; she belonged to a different atmosphere--such kindness, charity, penitence, resignation, and absolute abandonment to G.o.d were rare among the conspicuous French women. Sainte-Beuve says: ”She loved for love, without haughtiness, coquetry, arrogance, ambitious designs, self-interest, or vanity; she suffered and sacrificed everything, humiliated herself to expiate her wrong-doing, and finally surrendered herself to G.o.d, seeking in prayer the treasures of energy and tenderness; through her heart, her mental powers attained their complete development.”