Louis had just installed a camp at Moret, motley and smart, with pretty tents for the Amazons. "It is said," wrote d'Ormesson, "that the siege of Moret will be made in due form, in order to show the 'ladies' the method of taking places by assault. People in general, disgusted and annoyed, treat this review as childish trifling for a King, and it is badly thought of in foreign countries."
Olivier d'Ormesson did not display great merit in writing his comments in his journal for his eyes alone, but Colbert wrote for the King and had still many criticisms to add.
"It is further advisable for your Majesty to know two things which no one has before dared to report: one that there has been a poster in Paris, bearing the words Louis XIV. will give an exhibition of Marionettes in the plain at Moret; the other, the publication of a libel, still more bitter, upon the distinguished deeds of the fantastic captains." The King read the memorial and re-read it in the presence of Colbert, but the following year saw a new camp, in which the royal tent, composed of six sumptuous rooms, "was filled with cavaliers gorgeously attired, and better fitted to attract the enemy than to make him flee."[279] Colbert did not succeed, even in time of war, in preventing a single trip to the frontier with a long train of women in rare apparel, and mistresses for whose accommodation it was necessary to put masons at work at every halting-place.
From Louvois, March 7, 1671:
"Arrange chamber marked V for Mme. de Montespan, opening a door in the place marked 1. ... Mme. de La Vallière will lodge in the chamber marked Y, in which a door must be made in the place marked 3N...." The expense of the numerous doors, with many others equally irregular, entered into the budget of the Minister of War.
How was it possible to keep the budget accounts? How reduce unnecessary expenses? Colbert himself was obliged in his budget of the Marine to give space to the "ladies." In 1678, Mme. de Montespan conceived the fantasy of fitting out a privateer, a vessel belonging to the King, be it understood, manned with the royal sailors. Some weeks later, a second and third vessel were sent out in the same manner as privateers, always at the King's expense, "by Mme. de Montespan and the Comtesse de Soissons."[280] Including everything, the taste of Louis XIV. for conversation and the society of women, without mentioning the rest of his follies, probably cost France more than all the buildings erected by the Grand Monarch, but the one outlay can be calculated, and the other not.
DUCHESSE DE LA VALLIÈRE AND HER CHILDREN
From the painting by P. Mignard in the possession of the Marquise d'Oilliamson.