Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

Thus, one May day in 1714, the Duchesse found herself a widow, within four years of her wedding-day; and the last frail barrier was removed from the path of self-indulgence and low passions to which her life was dedicated. When, with the aged King's death in the following year, her father became Regent of France, her position as daughter of the virtual sovereign was now more splendid than ever; and before she had worn her widow's weeds a month, she had plunged again, still deeper, into dissipation, with Madame de Mouchy, one of her waiting-women, as chief minister to her pleasures.

It was at this time, before her husband had been many weeks in his grave, that the Comte de Riom, the last and most ill-favoured of her many lovers, came on the scene. Nothing but a perverted taste could surely have seen any attraction in such a lover as this grand-nephew of the Duc de Lauzun, of whom the austere and disapproving Palatine Duchess draws the following picture: "He has neither figure nor good-looks. He is more like an ogre than a man, with his face of greenish yellow. He has the nose, eyes, and mouth of a Chinaman; he looks, in fact, more like a baboon than the Gascon he really is. Conceited and stupid, his large head seems to sit on his broad shoulders, owing to the shortness of his neck. He is shortsighted and altogether is preternaturally ugly; and he appears so ill that he might be suffering from some loathsome disease."

To this unflattering description, Saint-Simon adds the fact that his "large, pasty face was so covered by pimples that it looked like one large abscess.'" Such, then, was the repulsive lover who found favour in the eyes of the Regent's daughter, and for whom she was ready to discard all her legion of more attractive wooers.

With the coming of de Riom, the Duchesse entered on the last and worst stage of her mis-spent life. Strange tales are told of the orgies of which the Luxembourg, the splendid palace her father had given her, was now the scene—orgies in which Madame de Mouchy and a Jesuit, one Father Ringlet, took a part, and over which the evil de Riom ruled as "Lord of merry disports." The Duchesse, now sunk to the lowest depths of degradation, was the veriest puppet in his strong hands, flattered by his coarse attentions and submitting to rudeness and ridicule such as any grisette, with a grain of pride, would have resented.

When these scandalous "carryings-on" at the Luxembourg Palace reached the Regent's ears and he ventured to read his daughter a severe lecture on her conduct, she retaliated by snapping her fingers at him and telling him in so many words to mind his own business. And to the tongue of scandal that found voice everywhere, she turned a contemptuous ear. She even locked and barred her palace gates to keep prying eyes at a safe distance.

But, although she thus defied man, she was powerless to stay the steps of fate. Her health, robust as it had been, was shattered by her excesses; and when a serious illness assailed her, she was horrified to find death so uncomfortably near. In her alarm she called for a priest to shrive her; and the Abbé Languet came at the summons to bring her the consolations of the Church. He refused point-blank, however, to give the sinner absolution until the palace was purged of the presence of de Riom and Madame de Mouchy, the arch-partners in her vices.

To this suggestion the Duchesse, perilous as her condition was, returned an uncompromising "No!" If the Abbé would not absolve her—well, there were other priests, less exacting, who would; and one such priest of elastic conscience, a Franciscan friar, was summoned to her bedside. Then ensued an unseemly struggle around the dying woman's bed, in which the Regent, Cardinal Noailles, Madame de Mouchy, and the rival clerics all played their parts.

While the obliging friar remained in the room awaiting an opportunity to administer the last Sacrament, the Abbé and his curates kept watch at the bedroom door to see that he did no such thing; and thus the siege lasted for four days and nights until, the patient's crisis over, the services of the Church were summarily dispensed with.

With the return of health, the Duchesse's piety quickly evaporated. It is true that she had had a fright; and, by way of modified penitence, she vowed to dress herself and her household in white for six months and also to make a husband of her lover. Within a few weeks, de Riom led the Regent's daughter to the altar, thus throwing the cloak of the Church over the licence of the past.

Now that our Princess was once more a "respectable" woman, she returned gladly to her old life of indulgence; until the Duchess Palatine exclaimed in alarm, "I am afraid her excesses in drinking and eating will kill her." And never was prediction more sure of early fulfilment. When she was not keeping company with her brandy bottle, she was gorging herself with delicacies of all kinds, from patties and fricassées to peaches and nectarines, washed down with copious draughts of iced beer.