‘She was received by all her friends and relatives with adoration, she was so pretty, naïve, natural, bold, so pleasant in appearance and so quiet in mind.’ One of the replies she made to La Reynie, who asked her if she had really seen the devil at the sorceress’s, was: ‘I see him now: he is ugly, old, and disguised as a councillor of state.’ This soon got abroad outside the Chambre, and set all Paris and the Court in good humour.
The charges against the Duchess de Bouillon were, nevertheless, very serious. It was proved to the commissioners that she had asked the sorceresses to poison the Duke de Bouillon or to procure his death by witchcraft. Madame de Sévigné thought the matter of little importance. ‘The Duchess de Bouillon,’ she wrote to her daughter, ‘went and asked La Voisin for a little poison to get rid of an old husband who was boring her to death, and an invention to marry a young man who wanted her, without any one knowing it. This young fellow was Monsieur de Vendôme, who took her to the Arsenal holding one hand, Monsieur de Bouillon holding the other. When a Mancini only commits a folly like that, it is winked at; these sorceresses do the thing seriously, and horrify all Europe about a trifle.’ Louis XIV took a more severe view of it, and decided that Madame de Bouillon should be confronted with La Voisin. The pretty face of the young duchess became graver when she heard this, and she begged to be spared this indignity. The king complied, but exiled her to Nérac, whence he would not allow her to return, in spite of the entreaties of her many friends.
The revelations which ensued before the Chambre struck a more cruel blow at La Reynie’s soul than the anger of the world. Wrapped in his consciousness of rectitude, he heard cries and threats only as the faint murmurs of a distant mob.
Three sentiments dominated him and guided his whole life: the religious sentiment, which declared itself in a strong, sane, simple piety, the piety of a man possessing a quiet conviction of the truth of his faith; love for his king, a love composed of respect and admiration, with shades of affection like that of a son for a father, and allied also to a religious veneration; finally, a high sentiment of his judicial office with an immovable respect for justice. His worship of the king extended to all that concerned and surrounded him, to all that he loved and honoured. The greatness of Louis XIV is easily explained, in spite of his personal mediocrity, when we see with what passion and by what men he was served. The revelations about Madame de Montespan, the mother of the king’s children, the woman who had almost won a seat on the throne of France, were anguish to La Reynie. It is touching to see his grief becoming more keen, more poignant, as evidence accumulated and conviction forced itself upon his mind. ‘Private facts,’ he writes at the head of a memorandum in which the charges against Madame de Montespan are summed up, ‘which were painful to listen to, the idea of which is so grievous to recall and which are still more difficult to relate.’ In the light of these revelations his judgment, usually so clear, precise, and sure, became confused, and being unable to believe what he saw, he fancied that his own vision was becoming imperfect. ‘I recognise my weakness. In spite of myself, the nature of these private circumstances (those concerning Madame de Montespan) impresses my mind with more fear than is reasonable. These crimes scare me.’ Then he recurs to the documents with judicial composure. ‘These are the very deeds we must look upon and draw our inferences from.’ But it was just the inferences deduced from these actions that his mind could not admit. ‘I recognise that I cannot pierce the thick darkness with which I am surrounded. I ask for time to think more about it; and perhaps it will happen that, after much thinking, I shall see even less than I see now. After well considering everything, I have found no other course to suggest than to seek for further enlightenment, and to await the aid of Providence, which has drawn from the feeblest imaginable beginnings the knowledge of this infinite number of strange things it was so necessary to know. All that has happened hitherto leads us to hope (and I do hope with great confidence) that God will at length reveal this abyss of crime, that He will at the same time show the means to escape from it, and inspire the king with all that he ought to do in a matter of such importance.’
In studying these reports of La Reynie to Louvois, we discover a circumstance as impressive as curious. In the course of his memoranda, the magistrate clearly and logically unfolds the reality of the charges against the favourite, but when in closing it falls upon him to draw practical conclusions, his mind shrinks from the task, his thought takes fright like a horse shying before an unexpected obstacle. ‘I have done what I could, when I examined the proofs and the presumptions, to assure myself and remain convinced that the facts are genuine, and I could not succeed. I have sought, on the other hand, everything that might persuade me that they were false, and that too has been impossible.’
His distress was augmented by the conflict which arose in his conscience between the duties he owed to justice and those he owed his king. ‘At that time when my mind was so cast down,’ he wrote, ‘I besought God in His mercy to permit me to preserve the fidelity I owed to my office, and to enable me to walk sincerely in all that it pleased the king to command me.’ Louis XIV ordered that a portion of the case should be withdrawn from the cognisance of the judges. The blow was so hard to La Reynie that his strength of mind wellnigh failed under it. ‘I hope,’ he wrote to Louvois on October 17, 1681, ‘that his Majesty in his favour and goodness will have compassion on my weakness when he considers that, with the fear and respect I could not fail to be in, occupied moreover and filled with the idea of a judge who, in giving a decision contrary to the truth, should judge and be a party to a judgment involving the life of men, I could not at the moment recognise the false position in which I was, nor represent to his Majesty that the affair in question was in the nature of the case not susceptible of the proposed expedient.’
For a moment his resolution seems to have been taken: he would put himself blindly and unreservedly in the hands of the king who had received from God, he writes, higher lights than those of other men; but the next instant the judge reappears in him and determines him, alone, unaided, subordinate official as he was, to enter into a struggle against the powerful ministers supported by the will and favour of the king.
At this moment his character reveals itself in all its greatness.
He went straight to Louis XIV and laid before him the charges against his mistress; then he wrote energetically to Louvois: ‘In spite of all the care that has been taken, all these facts (against Madame de Montespan) have cropped up so often, in so many different quarters, and with so many details, that the king has been obliged to allow the interrogation of the prisoners about the favourite, but in private.’
Louvois, one of the most intimate and well-liked friends of Madame de Montespan, did everything he could to save her. Madame de Maintenon, indeed, was hostile to her, and he feared her growing favour. Besides, as the Venetian ambassador observes, Louvois ‘worshipped the French monarchy, to which everything seemed to him subordinate.’ He felt bound to protect the prestige of the crown against the injury which the condemnation of the favourite would do it. Finally, in defending her, he thought he would ingratiate himself with Louis.