Athenais (34 page)
The conspiracy against Mlle. de Fontanges was developed, according to Marie, at the end of 1679. Marie’s former fiancé, a man named Romani, was to gain entry to La Fontanges’s house by posing as a silk merchant. Romani’s brother was the priest who confessed Mlle. des Oeillets, so access was to be arranged through her. Romani’s testimony corroborated these details. The plan was to poison La Fontanges with silks impregnated with arsenic, and for good measure La Voisin was said to have provided a pair of poisoned gloves as well. Marie also claimed that Athénaïs de Montespan, in a rage at having been discarded for La Fontanges, had plotted against the King. “My mother told me that the lady wanted at that time to go to extremities, and tried to induce her to do things for which she had much repugnance. My mother gave me to understand that it was against the King, and after hearing what took place at Trianon’s, I had no doubt about the matter.”
La Trianon was another “artist in poisons” who had been arrested on the evidence of Marie Bosse. She had often worked with La Voisin, and the alleged attempt to assassinate Louis was supposedly formed at her house in the Rue Beauregard in Paris, where the witches decided that Trianon would prepare a poison-soaked petition, which La Voisin would put into the King’s hands at St. Germain. Marie Monvoisin was under the impression that her mother and La Trianon would be paid 100,000 ecus for the task.
Marie’s third series of accusations concerned the black Masses Athénaïs was alleged to have commissioned, and in which it was claimed she had also participated, in 1673. The ceremonies were performed using the naked body of a woman as the “altar,” and “communion” was celebrated from a chalice containing wine mixed with the blood of a newborn infant. Three or four babies had purportedly been sacrificed on Athénaïs’s behalf. Marie claimed that she had seen “the lady lying on a mattress, her head hanging, a napkin on her stomach and on the napkin, a cross, at the base of the stomach, and the chalice on the stomach.” The first Mass had taken place, she said, at the chapel of Villeboursin, near the château of Montlhéry. The woman Marie believed to be Athénaïs de Montespan had recited the incantation for the ceremony: “Astaroth, Asmody, Princes of Friendship, I conjure you to accept the sacrifice of this infant I present to you for the things which I ask, which are that the friendship of the King and Monseigneur the Dauphin should continue towards me, that I should be honored by the princes and princesses of the court, that nothing I demand from the King should be denied to me, as much for my relations as for my household.” After this Mass, Marie claimed, her mother had decided that two more would be necessary, but Mme. de Montespan had said she really did not have the time, and so they had been conducted on her behalf, with a witch substituting for her. The second had been held at St. Denis and the third at La Voisin’s house, several weeks apart.
The priest who performed the ceremonies was the Abbé Guibourg, who had also been arrested. Marie Monvoisin added that Guibourg had told her he had performed a similar Mass in 1674, on a woman “whom he did not know and who everyone always told him was Mme. de Montespan.” Guibourg had served as chaplain at Montlhéry since 1664. The château was owned by M. Leroy, a relation of Mlle. des Oeillets, governor of the pages of the Petit Ecurie, a significant court post. The château, with its high, dark walls and deep moats, was an appropriate setting for Guibourg, whose face was so hideous that it terrified people and who, if the accusations against him were only partly true, was an appallingly evil man. He broadly confirmed Marie’s accusations, but said that the first Mass had taken place in 1667 or 1668, in the rooms of Mme. de Thianges at St. Ger-main. He quoted the incantation from memory: “I ask for the friendship of the King and that of Monseigneur the Dauphin, and that it should continue towards me, that the Queen should be sterile and that the King should leave her table and her bed for me; that I should obtain of him all that I ask for myself and for my relations; that the King should leave La Vallière and look at her no more, and that, the Queen being repudiated, I can marry the King.” Guibourg also supported the contention that Mlle. des Oeillets had been the go-between for La Voisin and Mme. de Montespan.
This was all unimaginably horrible. La Reynie might overlook some imprudent fooling with love potions, but sorcery, child murder, treason? What would happen if it became known that the mother of the King’s legitimized children had been dealing with witches and conducting satanic ceremonies within the walls of a royal palace? Was it conceivable that the legendary beauty who had governed the court with such spirited tyranny was capable of such repugnant crimes? Evidence from the other prisoners at Vincennes seemed to suggest that this was so.
Jeanne Chanfrain, one of Guibourg’s mistresses, testified that she had given birth to seven children by him, of whom three or four had been sacrificed to the Devil. Madeleine Gardey, the wife of François Chappelain, chief almoner to the King, claimed to have participated in a black Mass at St. Sulpice, where a note saying that Mme. de Montespan “wished to be loved by a person of consideration” had been passed beneath the chalice. Two of her servants, Françoise Filastre and La Dumesnil, had also been arrested. Dumesnil said that she had distilled the entrails of a baby whose throat had been cut to prepare a potion on behalf of Mme. de Montespan. Françoise Filastre had a lover named Coton, yet another corrupt priest, who had also taken Marie Bosse and Madeleine Gardey as mistresses. Coton had performed abortions and sacrificed his children by Françoise Filastre. Filastre maintained that she had practiced poisoning, and that, with Madeleine Gardey and Guibourg, she, too, had sold powders to Mme. de Montespan. Furthermore, she confessed under torture that Madeleine Gardey had asked advice on Mme. de Montespan’s behalf as to how to murder La Fontanges and remain in the King’s good graces. Together, they had provided a poison for Mme. de Montespan to give to her rival, and planned to try to smuggle La Filastre into Mlle. de Fontanges’s household. They had also intended to poison Colbert.
The other witnesses were Bertrand, who admitted to being part of the conspiracy with Romani to kill Mlle. de Fontanges; Delaporte, a witch who claimed to have witnessed a black Mass said by Guibourg for Mme. de Montespan, and La Duverger, yet another witch, who was the mistress of the Abbé Mariette. She lodged in the same house as Lesage, and testified that her room in the Rue de la Tannerie had been used for a black Mass said for the death of Louise de La Vallière in 1667. Mariette reiterated the evidence that had been suppressed at the Châtelet investigation in 1668, which La Reynie summarized:
Mariette, wearing his surplice and stole, sprinkled holy water, and read a Gospel over the head of Mme. de Montespan, while Lesage burned incense, and Mme. de Montespan recited an exorcism, which Lesage and Mariette had given her in writing. The name of the King occurred in this exorcism, and that of Mme. de Montespan, as well as that of Mme. de La Vallière. The exorcism was intended to obtain the favor of the King and the death of Mme. de La Vallière: Mariette said it was merely to get her sent away.
Mariette also explained that they had taken away two pigeons’ hearts, given by Mme. de Montespan, which were passed under the chalice at a Mass said by Mariette at St. Severin some days later, attended by Mme. de Montespan.
Such an incestuous labyrinth of corruption and murder might, in the following century, have sprung from the imagination of the Marquis de Sade, but there is no doubt that La Reynie, at least, took the witches at their word. From this complex web of evidence, it was possible to build up a picture of witchcraft that corresponded with the crises of Athénaïs’s relationship with the King over twelve years, from 1667–8 when she had consulted Lesage and Mariette about retaining the King’s love and disposing of Louise, to the apparent triumph of La Fontanges in 1679.
Had Athénaïs really resorted to black magic, infanticide even, in desperate pursuit of her ambition? An examination of the evidence suggests that Athénaïs was as innocent of the major crimes of which she was accused as she was guilty of the minor ones, and it is therefore surprising that a good many historians have chosen to accept the words of the witches as truth, and to paint Athénaïs as black as her accusers. It is not, however, difficult to exonerate her of the charges of murder and satanism if the testimonies of the prisoners are examined alongside the circumstances of Mlle. de Fontanges’s death, the involvement in the case of Louvois and the ever-present Mlle. des Oeillets, and finally the reaction of Louis himself. The Affair of the Poisons, and the relative degree of Athénaïs’s part in it, is crucial to any understanding of her life as
maîtresse en titre,
and the historical significance of her role at Louis’s court would be compromised without confirmation of her innocence.
The use of torture must cast doubt on many of the confessions. Marie Monvoisin was not tortured, but she was suicidally depressed, and the years she had spent as her mother’s assistant must surely have distorted her grasp on reality, a supposition borne out by her hysterical belief that her mother could attack her with spells from a separate prison cell. With her mother dead, there was no one to dispute her evidence. Françoise Filastre retracted her entire confession, elicited by the terrible
brodequins,
on the way to the scaffold, saying that she did not wish to die with such a vicious lie on her conscience. One theory as to the epidemic of confessions that emerged after La Voisin’s death was that the prisoners attempted to prolong their lives by mentioning Mme. de Montespan, as the investigations this would necessitate would keep them from the pyre. Although it has been proved that the security at Vincennes was not sufficiently lax for this to have been a collective plan — and indeed the coherence of many of the testimonies suggests that a lot of the prisoners believed themselves to be speaking the truth — it is notable that not one witness was able to swear that he or she had actually seen Mme. de Montespan, in spite of their eagerness to bring up her name.
Both Marie Monvoisin and Guibourg said that they “believed” that the naked woman serving as the altar for the black Mass had been Mme. de Montespan. The only physical picture provided was that of Marie Monvoisin, who described the masked woman who visited her mother as a “tall brunette.” Athénaïs was medium-sized and blond, and Marie agreed that the woman she had seen was in fact Mlle. des Oeillets. Guibourg was not able to prove that he had seen Mme. de Montespan, either — even at the Mass supposedly celebrated in Mme. de Thianges’s rooms, he had only been “told” that the woman who had participated was Athénaïs. His memory of the incantation repeated on this occasion, in 1667 or 1668, seems suspiciously clear and, most importantly, the date he gave contradicted that supplied by Marie Monvoisin, who placed the Mass in 1674. If Marie’s date was correct, then the request that the King should abandon Louise de La Vallière would have been superfluous, since she had not only already been dismissed but had left the court. If Guibourg’s date is accepted, then although the La Vallière argument would stand, the request for the friendship of the Dauphin would seem odd, as he was only six years old at the time. Moreover, the incantation seems to have been concocted by someone with no knowledge of court affairs or customs. The Queen had already proved that she was not sterile, and since this was the only acceptable reason for a monarch to repudiate his wife, the request that Marie-Thérèse be discarded for Mme. de Montespan is ridiculous. Besides, Athénaïs herself would have known that even if the Queen were dismissed, she herself could not marry Louis unless her own husband, from whom in 1667 she was not even formally separated, was to die. It is inconceivable that Athénaïs would have recited such stupidities, however nefarious her intentions.
Further doubts on the reliability of the Vincennes confessions are cast by the role of Louvois, whose presence in the Affair of the Poisons was prominent from the start. More properly, such matters should have been within Colbert’s jurisdiction, and the progress of the investigation may in some ways have been influenced by the rivalry between the two ministers. Louvois’s thirst for power was notorious — Saint-Simon goes so far as to suggest that he may have encouraged Louis to go to war simply to ensure his own primacy. The conclusion of the Dutch wars in 1678 meant that, for the present, domestic affairs, and therefore Colbert, took first place. Colbert had always been an ally of the Mortemart family, and was a particular friend of Athénaïs’s. Mme. Colbert had cared for the youngest of the mistress’s children, Mlle. de Blois and the Comte de Toulouse, and in 1680 Colbert’s third daughter, Marie-Anne de Seignelay, had been married to Louis de Rochechouart, the eldest son of Athénaïs’s brother the Duc de Vivonne. Apart from their brief coalition in the Lauzun affair, Louvois had always disliked Athénaïs, and, sensing the way the wind was blowing, had already openly declared himself a “Maintenoniste” (he was subsequently to be a witness at Louis’s second, secret, marriage). Louvois therefore had a good deal to lose if, as had happened so many times before, Athénaïs once again succeeded in making Louis return to her. If, on the other hand, her reputation should be irreparably blackened, Louvois, via Mme. de Maintenon, would have a great deal of influence over the King.
When Louvois, who had been following La Reynie’s investigations ever since the La Grange case, heard of the arrests of La Bosse, La Vigoureux and La Voisin, he wrote to Louis expressing his concern at the “extraordinary” revelations that were appearing. He interviewed Lesage in his cell, and offered him a pardon if he would talk. As the arrests began, it was notable that many of the accused were friends of Colbert — the Duchesse de Bouillon, the daughter of Louvois’s deceased rival the Maréchal de Turenne; the Duchesse de Vivonne, mother-in-law to Colbert’s daughter; the Duc de Luxembourg, whom Louvois hated because of Louis’s faith in his generalship. When the news of Luxembourg’s arrest began to circulate, Louvois rushed to him and offered to help him escape, saying that he would be mad not to flee into exile — a flight that would of course have been most convenient for the minister.