In the provinces, however, the consequences of high taxes and neglected agriculture were already being felt. The Duc de Lésdiguières described a typical situation in a letter to Colbert: “I cannot put off making known to you the misery to which I see this province reduced, commerce here has ceased absolutely, and from everywhere people come to beg me to make known to the King how impossible it is for them to pay the taxes. It is certain ...that the greatest part of the inhabitants of the said province have lived during the winter on only black bread and roots, and that, presently, one sees them eating the grass in the fields and the bark on the trees.”
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It was a long way from Louis’s glamorous warmongering “in lace and feathers.”
Athénaïs made her only venture into public politics during the last stages of the war. Rather sweetly, she declared that she was moved by the sufferings of the French people, which she had seen as she followed so many campaigns, and that she wanted to be part of the final effort to gain victory for her ailing country. With the help of Colbert’s son Seignelay, she selected a ship,
Le Comté,
which she equipped and manned, from her own private funds, with 200 officers and sailors, mostly recruited from her ancestral estate of Tonnay-Charente, under the command of Captain Louis de la Motte-Grenouille. Colbert’s correspondence emphasizes that
Le Comté
’s expenses were to be kept separate from those of the rest of the King’s fleet, since it was a private enterprise. It was typical of Athénaïs’s vanity that she chose such a magnificent, showy way to declare her support for the cause, and in fact
Le Comté
never sailed to war as the Peace of Nijmegen intervened. But it was a bold gesture, and in keeping with the Rochechouart connection with the sea. Of course, such patriotism would also have found approval with Louis, so perhaps Athénaïs’s motives, which were never dissociated from her need to please the King, were not entirely altruistic.
Athénaïs’s brother Vivonne was involved in the war as admiral of the fleet when the Sicilians, who had formerly been controlled by the Spanish, rose against their overlords with the assistance of the French. Vivonne governed the island for a while, but when the peace treaty was signed it was considered that the presence of French troops in Sicily was prejudicial to the settlement, and he returned to France in 1678.
Despite the strains of the war, the French mood after the Peace of Nijmegen was euphoric, and Louis’s popularity reached a height it would never again attain. The birth of another healthy son, Louis-Alexandre, Comte de Toulouse, to Athénaïs at Clagny on 6 June seemed to bestow the final blessing on the apparently semidivine lovers. The year 1678 was perhaps the zenith of the reign, the apogee of the “Age Montespan”: Louis appeared invincible; his mistress “stood forth in the full blaze of her shameless glory.”
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Nothing was too good for Athénaïs, and if Louis denied her any political influence, he denied her nothing else. She was the perfect complement to the military might he had established, and “her spirit, her culture, her intellectual and worldly influence must have attracted a great deal of regard to the King.”
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Her train was carried by the Duc de Noailles, a peer of France, while the Queen had to make do with a mere page. Her suite, her toilettes, her soirées were all of a royal magnificence that far outstripped her 6,000-livre salary as a nominal lady-in-waiting. She received a further 150,000 livres from the King for the care and education of their children, but to assist with her own expenses, including those streams of gold that tumbled nightly on to the gambling table, she was given permission to draw on the privy purse.
More than ever, Marie-Thérèse was marginalized among her priests while Louis spent the best part of his time with Athénaïs, dining with her and their older children, and even conducting meetings with his ministers in her rooms. Humiliated, the Queen was famously heard to remark, “This whore will kill me.” Although it can hardly be claimed that Athénaïs spared the Queen’s feelings, the numerous historians who resent the significance of Athénaïs’s role in the greatest court France has ever known seem reluctant to acknowledge that she did perform several practical kind acts for the Queen. For example, when one of Marie-Thérèse’s beloved Spanish waiting women involved herself in a foolish correspondence with the court of her native country, at that time allied with Holland against France, Louis furiously declared that he would send the maid away. The Queen begged Athénaïs to intercede to change his mind. The maid was permitted to remain, and Mme. de Sévigné records that the Queen was overjoyed “and declares that she will never forget the obligation under which Mme. de Montespan has placed her.”
The degree of respect in which Athénaïs was held by the entire court was demonstrated by the sensation of the New Year gifts she received in 1679. Marie-Thérèse and all her ladies-in-waiting produced presents, but the most magnificent was Monsieur’s, who defied his wife in favor of his old friendship for Athénaïs, which dated from her début at the Louvre. He gave her a chiseled gold salver with a border of emeralds and diamonds and two golden goblets decorated in the same fashion. This sumptuous present was estimated by the sharp eyes of the court to be worth 10,000 ecus. From the Marquise de Maintenon, Athénaïs received a little emerald-encrusted book entitled
Les Oeuvres de M. le Duc du Maine,
a charming collection of letters purportedly written by her nine-year-old son, with a preface scripted by Racine. On the surface, the book was a costly and engaging mark of the respect of the governess for her mistress, suggesting that at this point, La Maintenon accorded with the general perception of Athénaïs as invulnerable, and thought it prudent to maintain some vestige of her former subservient position. But the contents of the book give a telling insight into the depths to which La Maintenon was prepared to stoop in her ongoing pursuit of the King’s soul, and it was to prove a most effective weapon.
The general view of the strength of Athénaïs’s position was, however, misjudged, for it was in 1679 that the
maîtresse en titre
finally began to lose her hold over the King. The Ludres alliance had been disbanded as soon as poor Io mooed her way into obscurity, and the two marquises were once again at daggers drawn. Athénaïs was irritated at the way the governess used her relationship with the little Duc du Maine to make demands on Louis’s attention. All Athénaïs’s children by Louis were rather fragile (unlike her legitimate children, which is another indication of the weakness of the overbred Bourbon bloodline), but Du Maine gave cause for particular concern. Aged three, as the last of his milk teeth developed, he had suffered a debilitating fever that left him with one leg shorter than the other and a most pathetic limp. After various remedies had failed, Mme. de Main-tenon, under the pseudonym of Mme. de Surgères, took him for a cure at Anvers and then to Barèges in the Pyrenees, where a fistula which had developed on the little boy’s thigh was treated, and he returned in better health. Although in later life he proved, to his father’s great distress, to be a coward on the battlefield, he bore the various horrible treatments to which he was subjected, such as being stretched on a rack, with admirable courage. In 1676, the cure was successfully repeated, to the delight of his mother and aunts, Mme. de Thianges and the Abbesse de Fontrevault, who went to meet him on the road. Despite her pleasure in Du Maine’s recovery, Athénaïs was jealous and frustrated that she had not been permitted to accompany her son on this and subsequent visits.
Du Maine was Louis’s favorite child, far more attractive and appealing than the lumpen Grand Dauphin, who had inherited all his mother’s charm, and La Maintenon was shrewd enough to exploit her proximity to the boy to improve her standing with his father. Athénaïs was by no means a neglectful or disinterested mother, but as we have seen, her court duties left her little time for childcare, and Louis was selfish enough to insist that he always come first. It must have seemed very unfair that he was then so pleased to discuss Du Maine with La Maintenon. She seems to have loved the child for his own sake, and was a painstaking and encouraging tutor, improving Du Maine’s confidence so that he was easy and funny with adults, unlike his legitimate half-brother, who had had any natural vivacity he may have possessed whacked out of him by Bossuet. Louis was proud of Du Maine, and La Maintenon lost no opportunity to lavish delicate flatteries on this small extension of the King’s person.
Of these, one of the most effective was the little book of Du Maine’s letters presented to Athénaïs as a New Year gift. It is hard to believe that such an intelligent man as Louis was fooled by such a crass attempt at manipulation, but then, literary criticism was never his strong point. Mme. de Maintenon had schooled her pupil well in damning his mother with faint praise, while at the same time emphasizing her own good influence. The little boy was forbidden to address the King as “Papa,” although on one occasion at a boating party he was given too much red wine, and had his gondolier row up to Louis, whereupon he shouted: “Long live the King my father!” before collapsing in giggles into his governess’s arms. His affection for this distant, awe-inspiring man is certainly touching: “I was jealous, Sire, of the letter you did Mme. de Maintenon the honor of writing to her; I so long for signs of your friendship that I can’t bear you to give them to other people” (Barèges, 1677), but he also reports disingenuously on his mother’s peccadillos: “I have received a letter from the King which fills me with transports of joy, nothing could be more obliging. I shall not do as you did when at Maintenon [during the brief reign of La Ludres] you burnt one from him” (Barèges, 1677). Again, to Athénaïs: “I was inconsolable to see you depart today [for the siege of Ghent]. The King did me the honor to look at me, as he left the chapel, I was delighted with the little sign he made with his head, but afflicted by his departure, and for you, Madame, very unhappy that you seemed to me to be hardly bothered.” On one occasion, when Louis was questioning the child on his lessons, and well satisfied with his answers, he praised his son’s good sense. “I ought to be reasonable,” answered the little Duc studiedly, “since I have a lady around me who is reason itself.”
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Louis was pleased enough to give Du Maine 1,000 francs as a gift for his wise teacher.
To make matters worse as far as Athénaïs was concerned, La Main-tenon remained infuriatingly attractive, whereas Athénaïs, at thirty-nine, was beginning to lose her looks. In fact, since the birth of the Comte de Toulouse, the sexual passion between her and the King — that powerful, anarchic constant in their relationship — had been dying. Nine pregnancies had taken their toll on Athénaïs’s figure, and her natural tendency to greed led her to overeat to console herself for his waning interest. She put on a lot of weight, which La Maintenon was quick to remark upon: “Mme. de Montespan has fattened by a foot since you saw her, she is astonishing,” she reported spitefully to a correspondent. The governess was not alone in her derogatory observations on the favorite’s Junoesque curves. On seeing Athénaïs getting out of her carriage, Primi Visconti reported that her legs were so fat, one of them was the size of his torso (to be fair, he added gallantly, “I have recently lost weight”).
Mme. de Maintenon, too, was plumper, but a little extra weight suited her full bosom and beautiful vellum skin. Though five years older than Athénaïs, she had retained a fresh, serene beauty, and her eyes were as bright and clear as ever. Athénaïs, by contrast, exhausted herself with the frenzied distractions of the
bassette
table, and, for the first time, appeared to be drinking as well as eating too much. She was under strain, and it was manifest in her looks that her confidence and her energy were evaporating.
If alcoholism is a family trait, it may well have been that Athénaïs struggled with the affliction, for her daughters, and particularly her granddaughter the Duchesse de Berry, scandalized polite society with their drinking. The Duchesse, the daughter of the former Mlle. de Blois, “resembled her grandmother Mme. de Montespan in her eloquence, her embonpoint, her drinking, her sexuality,”
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and was the black sheep of the royal family, dying aged twenty-four after a life of alcohol, gluttony and promiscuity (the latter most notoriously, it was rumored, involving her own father). Only six weeks after her wedding to the youngest son of the Grand Dauphin, she had to be carried speechless and incontinent with drink from a party at St. Cloud. Both of her aunts, Athénaïs’s other daughters, were known to be hard drinkers, “as drunk as a bellringer” three or four times a week in their teens, and they often interrupted their endless competitive sniping to carouse together.
10
Athénaïs herself gave up alcohol at the end of her life, but in this difficult period, she may well have turned to the bottle, which would explain the increased ferocity of her temper, as well perhaps, as the fits of “vapors” which kept her to her rooms for days. Alcohol may also have contributed to the sad ruination of her figure. Mme. de Maintenon’s charm might have been quieter than Athénaïs’s once-radiant beauty, but it seemed to be more enduring. “It was difficult to see her often without developing an inclination for her,” wrote the Abbé de Choisy,
11
while the diarist Saint-Simon commented on her “incomparable grace.”
Louis was still so attached to Athénaïs, so proud of her, and so accustomed to her presence at the center of the court, that she perhaps had less need than she perceived to feel threatened. But sadly, along with her looks, Athénaïs seemed to be losing her judgment, and with it her temper. As 1679 drew on without any sign of the King returning to her bed, she began to punish him with furious tantrums, allowing herself to forget that he hated scenes of any kind. Louis continued to spend a good deal of time in her rooms, but rather than being amused by her conversation he had to endure nagging, screaming and fits of tears. When he withdrew to the tranquillity of La Maintenon’s apartment, Athénaïs felt neglected and wronged and redoubled her fury, succeeding only in driving him further away. She was mystified by the appeal of this quiet, secretive woman, and her bemusement was shared by the courtiers, who put about rumors that La Maintenon was taking dictation of the King’s memoirs, or even that she was a secret procuress who obtained young girls for him. The more perceptive among them, though, had taken to calling her Mme. de Maintenant.
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