Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

Mlle. de La Vallière was the mother of several children of whom Louis XIV. was the father. On realizing that she had rivals in the favor of the sovereign, she fled several times from the Tuileries to the convent; on her second return, the king, about to go to battle, recognized his daughter by her, whom he made a duchess. Remorse overcame the mistress so deeply that she, for the third and final time, left court. Especially on the rise to power of Mme. de Montespan was she painfully humiliated, suffering the most intense pangs of conscience. The evening before her final departure to the convent, she dined with Mme. de Montespan, to drink "the cup to the dregs and to enjoy the rejection of the world even to the last remains of its bitterness."

Guizot describes this period most vividly: "When Mme. de Montespan began to supplant her in the king's favor, the grief of Mlle. de La Vallière was so great that she thought she would die of it. Then she turned to God, penitent and in despair; twice she sought refuge in a convent at Chaillot. On leaving, she sent word to the king: 'After having lost the honor of your good graces I would have left the court sooner, if I could have prevailed upon myself never to see you again; but that weakness was so strong in me that hardly now am I capable of sacrificing it to God. After having given you all my youth, the remainder of my life is not too much for the care of my salvation.'" The king still clung to her. "He sent M. Colbert to beg her earnestly to come to Versailles that he might speak with her. M. Colbert escorted her thither and the king conversed for an hour with her and wept bitterly. Mme. de Montespan was there to meet her, with open arms and tears in her eyes." "It is all incomprehensible," adds Mme. de Sévigné; "some say that she will remain at Versailles and at court, others that she will return to Chaillot; we shall see."

Mlle. de La Vallière remained three years at court, "half penitent," she said, humbly, detained by the king's express wish, in consequence of the tempers and jealousies of Mme. de Montespan who felt herself judged and condemned by her rival's repentance. Attempts were made to turn Mlle. de La Vallière from her inclination for the Carmelites': "Madame," said Mme. Scarron to her, one day, "here are you one blaze of gold; have you really considered that, before long, at the Carmelites' you will have to wear serge?" She, however, was not to be dissuaded from her determination and was already practising, in secret, the austerities of the convent. "God has laid in this heart the foundation of great things," said Bossuet, who supported her in her conflict; "the world puts great hindrances in her way, and God great mercies; I have hopes that God will prevail; the uprightness of her heart will carry everything before it."

"When I am in trouble at the Carmelites'," said Mlle. de La Vallière, as for the last time she quitted the court, "I shall think of what those people have made me suffer." "The world itself makes us sick of the world," said Bossuet in the sermon which he preached on the day she took the veil; "its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness. There is enough of bitterness, enough of injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of inconsistency and capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors—there is enough of it all, to disgust us."

When, in 1675, she took the final vows, she cut off her beautiful hair and devoted herself to the church and to charity, receiving the veil from the queen, whose forgiveness she sought before entering the convent. The king showed himself to be such a jealous lover, that when Mlle. de La Vallière entirely abandoned him for God, he forgot her absolutely, never going to the convent to see her.

She was by far the most interesting and pathetic of the three mistresses of Louis XIV.; her heart was superior to that of either of her successors, though her mind was inferior; she belonged to a different atmosphere—such kindness, charity, penitence, resignation, and absolute abandonment to God were rare among the conspicuous French women. Sainte-Beuve says: "She loved for love, without haughtiness, coquetry, arrogance, ambitious designs, self-interest, or vanity; she suffered and sacrificed everything, humiliated herself to expiate her wrong-doing, and finally surrendered herself to God, seeking in prayer the treasures of energy and tenderness; through her heart, her mental powers attained their complete development."

The fate of Mlle. de La Vallière was the same as that of nearly all royal mistresses; abandoned and absolutely forgotten by her lover, she sought refuge and consolation in religion and God's mercy. "She was dead to me the day she entered the Carmelites'," said the king, thirty-five years later, when the modest and fervent nun at last expired, in 1710, without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance.

Of an entirely different type from Mlle. de La Vallière was that haughtiest and most supercilious of all French mistresses, Mme. de Montespan. The picture drawn by M. Saint-Amand does her full justice: "A haughty and opulent beauty, a forest of hair, flashing blue eyes, a complexion of splendid carnation and dazzling whiteness, one of those alluring and radiant countenances which shed brightness around them wherever they appear, an incisive, caustic wit, an unquenchable thirst for riches and pleasure, luxury and power, the manners of a goddess audaciously usurping the place of Juno on Olympus, passion without love, pride without true dignity, splendor without harmony—that was Mme. de Montespan." And these qualities were the secret of her success as well as of her fall.

From this description it can easily be divined of what nature was her influence and how she gained and held her power over the king. She won Louis XIV. entirely by her sensual charms, provoked him by her imperious exactions, her ungovernable fits of temper, and her daring sarcasm; always extravagant and unreasonable, she talked constantly of balls and fêtes, the glories of court and its scandals. Most exacting, yet never satisfied, she had no regard for the interests or honor of the weak king, to whose lower nature only she appealed.