It would have been hard to find a better creature than Marie-Thérèse, fresh and round, who leapt with joy the day following her marriage, and related ingenuously to Mme. de Motteville her little romance. Marie-Thérèse had always remembered that her mother,[122] who died when she was only six, had repeated that she desired to see her Queen of France; that this was the only possible happiness, or, if not attained, nothing remained but a convent. The little Princess had grown up with the thought of France. Louis XIV. had been the Prince Charmant of her infant dreams. When she knew that a French lord came "post haste" to demand her hand for his master, it seemed to her entirely natural. She had spied from a window the arrival of M. de Gramont.[123] He had passed by very quickly, followed by many other Frenchmen, decorated with gold and silver, and covered with feathers and ribbons of all colours. One might have said, "a parterre of flowers, bearing the royal demand," related the young Queen, becoming poetical for the first and last time in her life.
Once married, Marie-Thérèse had demanded of her husband the promise that they should never be separated, either by day or night, if it possibly could be avoided. Louis XIV. promised and kept his word, but it was a useless precaution.
According to Mme. de Motteville and Mme. de Maintenon,[124] the Queen did not know how to conduct herself toward her husband. She was stupid in her manner of showing her devotion; if the King wanted her, she would refuse to sacrifice a prayer in order to be with him. She had also an "ill-directed" jealousy; if the King did not desire her company, she did not sufficiently distinguish, in her complaints, against those who wiled him away, between Mlle. de La Vallière and the Council of Ministers. Her ill temper was discouraging. If the King led her with him, she complained of everything; if he did not, there were floods of tears. If the dinner was not to her taste she sulked; if it pleased her, tormented herself: "Everything will be eaten, nothing will be left for me." "And the King jeered at her," added Mademoiselle, having the honour, through her birth, of being often found amongst those who "eat everything."
HÉLÈNE LAMBERT, MADAME DE MOTTEVILLE
After the painting by De Largillière
Marie-Thérèse was good, generous, virtue itself, she had a violent passion for her husband, and with all this she was a person to be avoided. Mme. de Maintenon summed up the situation in saying that "the Queen knew how to love but not how to please; the reverse of the King, who possessed qualities for pleasing all, without being capable of a strong affection. All women except his own wife were agreeable to him."
Free-thinkers and debauchees did not have to consider Marie-Thérèse; she had not a shadow of influence over her husband. For different reasons, neither Monsieur, the brother of the King, nor the wife of Monsieur were any obstacles. Much has been said of the seductive power of Mme. Henrietta of England[125]; of her irresistible grace, her delicate beauty, and her special charm. These characteristics, very rare with a great princess, had proved of great value during her youth of humiliating poverty, when she was reduced to living as a "private person." She had then met with "all celebrities, all civility, and all humanity, even upon ordinary conditions,[126] and nothing perhaps had contributed more to make her love men and adore women." Her faults were great, but they were not weighed against her, on account of that gift of pleasing which was in her and which circumstances had developed. Madame was a hidden evil influence, and an openly dangerous one. She could become the centre of low Court intrigues, without losing, or even risking, the loss of her empire over hearts. To this first good fortune was united that of having Bossuet to shelter her memory.
Henrietta of England has traversed "centuries protected by his [Bossuet's] funeral oration," as she passed through her life protected by the fascination with which nature endows certain women, by no means always the best ones.