CHAPTER III.
Madame de Montespan at the Palace.—M. de Montespan.—His Indiscreet
Language.—His Absence.—Specimen of His Way of Writing.—A Refractory
Cousin.—The King Interferes.—M. de Montespan a Widower.—Amusement of
the King.—Clemency of Madame de Montespan.
The Duc and Duchesse de Navailles had long been friends of my father's and of my family. When the Queen-mother proceeded to form the new household of her niece and daughter-in-law, the Infanta, the Duchesse de Navailles, chief of the ladies-in-waiting, bethought herself of me, and soon the Court and Paris learnt that I was one of the six ladies in attendance on the young Queen.
This princess, who while yet at the Escurial had been made familiar with the notable names of the French monarchy, honoured me during the journey by alluding in terms of regard to the Mortemarts and Rochechouarts,—kinsmen of mine. She was even careful to quote matters of history concerning my ancestors. By such marks of good sense and good will I perceived that she would not be out of place at a Court where politeness of spirit and politeness of heart ever go side by side, or, to put it better, where these qualities are fused and united.
M. le Marquis de Montespan, scion of the old house of Pardaillan de Gondrin, had preferred what he styled "my grace and beauty" to the most wealthy partis of France. He was himself possessed of wealth, and his fortune gave him every facility for maintaining at Court a position of advantage and distinction.
At first the honour which both Queens were graciously pleased to confer upon me gave my husband intense satisfaction. He affectionately thanked the Duc and Duchesse de Navailles, and expressed his most humble gratitude to the two Queens and to the King. But it was not long before I perceived that he had altered his opinion.
The love-affair between Mademoiselle de la Valliere and the King having now become public, M. de Montespan condemned this attachment in terms of such vehemence that I perforce felt afraid of the consequences of such censure. He talked openly about the matter in society, airing his views thereanent. Impetuously and with positive hardihood, he expressed his disapproval in unstinted terms, criticising and condemning the prince's conduct. Once, at the ballet, when within two feet of the Queen, it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be prevented from discussing so obviously unfitting a question, or from sententiously moralising upon the subject.
All at once the news of an inheritance in the country served to occupy his attention. He did all that he could to make me accompany him on this journey. He pointed out to me that it behoved no young wife to be anywhere without her husband. I, for my part, represented to him all that in my official capacity I owed to the Queen. And as at that time I still loved him heartily (M. de Montespan, I mean), and was sincerely attached to him, I advised him to sell off the whole of the newly inherited estate to some worthy member of his own family, so that he might remain with us in the vast arena wherein I desired and hoped to achieve his rapid advance.
Never was there man more obstinate or more selfwilled than the Marquis. Despite all my friendly persuasion, he was determined to go. And when once settled at the other end of France, he launched out into all sorts of agricultural schemes and enterprises, without even knowing why he did so. He constructed roads, built windmills, bridged over a large torrent, completed the pavilions of his castle, replanted coppices and vineyards, and, besides all this, hunted the chamois, bears, and boars of the Nebouzan and the Pyrenees. Four or five months after his departure I received a letter from him of so singular a kind that I kept it in spite of myself, and in the Memoirs it will not prove out of place. Far better than any words of mine, it will depict the sort of mind, the logic, and the curious character of the man who was my husband.
MONTESPAN,—May 15, 1667.
I count more than ever, madame, upon your journey to the Pyrenees. If you love me, as all your letters assure me, you should promptly take a good coach and come. We are possessed of considerable property here, which of late years my family have much neglected. These domains require my presence, and my presence requires yours. Enough is yours of wit or of good sense to understand that.
The Court is, no doubt, a fine country,—finer than ever under the present reign. The more magnificent the Court is, the more uneasy do I become. Wealth and opulence are needed there; and to your family I never figured as a Croesus. By dint of order and thrift, we shall ere long have satisfactorily settled our affairs; and I promise you that our stay in the Provinces shall last no longer than is necessary to achieve that desirable result. Three, four, five,—let us say, six years. Well, that is not an eternity! By the time we come back we shall both of us still be young. Come, then, my dearest Athenais, come, and make closer acquaintance with these imposing Pyrenees, every ravine of which is a landscape and every valley an Eden. To all these beauties, yours is missing; you shall be here, like Dian, the goddess of these noble forests. All our gentlefolk await you, admiring your picture on the sweetmeat-box. They are minded to hold many pleasant festivals in your honour; you may count upon having a veritable Court. Here it is that you will meet the old Warnais nobility that followed Henri IV. and placed the sceptre in his hand. Messieurs de Grammont and de Biron are our neighbours; their grim castles dominate the whole district, so that they seem like kings.
Our Chateau de Montespan will offer you something less severe; the additions made for my mother twenty years ago are infinitely better than anything that you will leave behind you in Paris. We have here the finest fruits that ever grew in any earthly paradise. Our huge, luscious peaches are composed of sugar, violets, carnations, amber, and jessamine; strawberries and raspberries grow everywhere; and naught may vie with the excellence of the water, the vegetables, and the milk.
You are fond of scenery and of sketching from nature; there are half a dozen landscapes here for you that leave Claude Lorrain far behind. I mean to take you to see a waterfall, twelve hundred and seventy feet in height, neither more nor less. What are your fountains at Saint Germain and Chambord compared with such marvellous things as these?
Now, madame, I am really tired of coaxing and flattering you, as I have done in this letter and in preceding ones. Do you want me, or do you not? Your position as Court lady, so you say, keeps you near the monarch; ask, then, or let me ask, for leave of absence. After having been for four consecutive years Lady of the Palace, consent to become Lady of the Castle, since your duties towards your spouse require it. The young King, favourite as he is with the ladies, will soon find ten others to replace you. And I, dearest Athenais, find it hard even to think of replacing you, in spite of your cruel absence, which at once annoys and grieves me. I am—no, I shall be—always and ever yours, when you are always and ever mine.
MONTESPAN.
I hastened to tell my husband in reply that his impatience and ill-humour made me most unhappy; that as, through sickness or leave of absence, five or six of the Court ladies were away, I could not possibly absent myself just then; that I believed that I sufficiently merited his confidence to let me count upon his attachment and esteem, whether far or near. And I gave him my word of honour that I would join him after the Court moved to Fontainebleau, that is to say, in the autumn.
My answer, far from soothing or calming him, produced quite a contrary effect. I received the following letter, which greatly alarmed and agitated me:
Your allegations are only vain pretexts, your pretexts mask your falsehoods, your falsehoods confirm all my suspicions; you are deceiving me, madame, and it is your intention to dishonour me. My cousin, who saw through you better than I did before my wretched marriage,—my cousin, whom you dislike and who is no whit afraid of you,—informs me that, under the pretext of going to keep Madame de la Valliere company, you never stir from her apartments during the time allotted to her by the King, that is to say, three whole hours every evening. There you pose as sovereign arbiter; as oracle, uttering a thousand divers decisions; as supreme purveyor of news and gossip; the scourge of all who are absent; the complacent promoter of scandal; the soul and the leader of sparkling conversation.
One only of these ladies became ill, owing to an extremely favourable confinement, from which she recovered a week ago. At the outset, the King fought shy of your raillery, but in a thousand discreditable ways you set your cap at him and forced him to pay you attention. If all the letters written to me (all of them in the same strain) are not preconcerted, if your misconduct is such as I am told it is, if you have dishonoured and disgraced your husband, then, madame, expect all that your excessive imprudence deserves. At this distance of two hundred and fifty leagues I shall not trouble you with complaints and vain reproaches; I shall collect all necessary information and documentary evidence at headquarters; and, cost me what it may, I shall bring action against you, before your parents, before a court of law, in the face of public opinion, and before your protector, the King. I charge you instantly to deliver up to me my child. My unfortunate son comes of a race which never yet has had cause to blush for disgrace such as this. What would he gain, except bad example, by staying with a mother who has no virtue and no husband? Give him up to me, and at once let Dupre, my valet, have charge of him until my return. This latter will occur sooner than you think; and I shall shut you up in a convent, unless you shut me up in the Bastille.
Your unfortunate husband, MONTESPAN.
The officious cousin to whom he alluded in this threatening letter had been so bold as to sue for my hand, although possessed of no property. Ever since that time he remained, as I knew, my enemy, though I did not know, nor ever suspected, that such a man would find pleasure in spying upon my actions and in effecting the irrevocable estrangement of a husband and a wife, who until then had been mutually attached to each other.
The King, whose glance, though very sweet, is very searching, said to me that evening, "Something troubles you; what is it?" He felt my pulse, and perceived my great agitation. I showed him the letter just transcribed, and his Majesty changed colour.
"It is a matter requiring caution and tact," added the prince after brief meditation. "At any rate we can prevent his showing you any disrespect. Give up the Marquis d'Antin to him," continued the King, after another pause. "He is useless, perhaps an inconvenience, to you; and if deprived of his child he might be driven to commit some desperate act."
"I would rather die!" I exclaimed, bursting into tears.
The King affectionately took hold of both my hands, and gently said:
"Very well, then, keep him yourself, and don't give him up."
As God is my witness, M. de Montespan had already neglected me for some time before he left for the Pyrenees; and to me this sudden access of fervour seemed singularly strange. But I am not easily hoodwinked; I understood him far better and far quicker than he expected. The Marquis is one of those vulgar-minded men who do not look upon a woman as a friend, a companion, a frank, free associate, but as a piece of property or of furniture, useful to his house, and which he has procured for that purpose only.
I am told that in England a man is the absolute proprietor of his wife, and that if he took her to the public market with a cord round her neck and exhibited her for sale, such sale is perfectly valid in the eyes of the law. Laws such as these inspire horror. Yet they should hardly surprise one among a semibarbarous nation, which does nothing like other peoples, and which deems itself authorised to place the censer in the hands of its monarch, and its monarch in the hands of the headsman.
M. de Montespan came to Paris and instituted proceedings against me before the Chatelet authorities. To the King he sent a letter full of provocations and insults. To the Pope he sent a formal complaint, accompanied by a most carefully prepared list of opinions which no lawyer was willing to sign. For three whole months he tormented the Pope, in order to induce him to annul our marriage. Of a truth, our Sovereign Pontiff could have done nothing better, but in Rome justice and religion always rank second to politics. The cardinals feared to offend a great prince, and so they suffered me to remain the wife of my husband. When he saw that on every side his voice was lost in the desert, and that the King, being calmer and more prudent than he, did not deign to pick up the glove, his folly reached its utmost limit. He went into the deepest mourning ever seen. He draped his horses and carriages with black. He gave orders for a funeral service to be held in his parish, which the whole town and its suburbs were invited to attend. He declared, verbally and in writing, that he no longer possessed a wife; that Madame de Montespan had died of an attack of coquetry and ambition; and he talked of marrying again when the year of mourning and of widowhood should be over.
His first outbursts of wrath were the source of much amusement to the King, who naturally was on the side of decorum and averse to hostile opinion. Pranks such as these seemed to him more a matter for mirth than fear, and, on hearing the story of the catafalque, he laughingly said to me, "Now that he has buried you, it is to be hoped that he will let you repose in peace." But hearing each day of fresh absurdities, his Majesty grew at last impatient. Luckily, M. de Montespan, perceiving that every house had closed its doors to him, decided to close his own altogether and travel abroad.
Not being of a vindictive disposition, I never would allow M. de Louvois to shut him up in the Bastille. On the contrary I privately paid more than fifty thousand crowns to defray his debts, being glad to render him some good service in exchange for all the evil that he spoke of me.
I reflected that he had been my husband, my confidant, my friend; that his only faults were bad temper, love of sport, and love of wine; that he belonged to one of the very first families of France; and that, despite all that was said, my son D'Antin certainly was nothing to the King, and that the Marquis was his father.