Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

But although one lady after another, from that most bewitching of madcaps, Mademoiselle de Charolois, to the dark-eyed, buxom Comtesse de Toulouse, practised on him all their allurements, strove to awake his senses "by a thousand coquetries, a thousand assaults, the King's timidity eluded these advances, which amused and alarmed, but did not tempt his heart; that young monarch's heart was still so full of the aged Fleury's terrifying tales of the women of the Regency."

Such coyness, however, was not long to stand in the way of the King's appetite for pleasure which every day strengthened. One day it began to be whispered that at last Louis had been vanquished—that, at a supper at La Muette, he had proposed the health of an "Unknown Fair," which had been drunk with acclamation by his boon-companions; and the Court was full of excited speculation as to who his mysterious charmer could be. That some new and powerful influence had come into the young sovereign's life was abundantly clear, from the new light that shone in his eyes, the laughter that was now always on his lips. He had said "good-bye" to melancholy; he astonished all by his new vivacity, and became the leader in one dissipation after another, "whose noisy merriment he led and prolonged far into the night."

It was not long before the identity of the worker of this miracle was revealed to the world. She had been recognised more than once when making her stealthy way to the King's apartments; she was his chosen companion on his journey to Compiègne; and it was soon public knowledge that Madame de Mailly was the woman who had captured the King's elusive heart. And indeed there was little occasion for surprise; for Madame de Mailly, although she would never see her thirtieth birthday again, was one of the most seductive women in all France.

Black-eyed, crimson-lipped, oval-faced, Madame de Mailly was one of those women who "with cheeks on fire, and blood astir, eyes large and lustrous as the eyes of Juno, with bold carriage and in free toilettes, step forward out of the past with the proud and insolent graces of the divinities of some Bacchanalia." With the provocative and sensual charm which is so powerful in its appeal, she had a rare skill in displaying her beauty to its fullest advantage. Her cult of the toilette, the Duc de Luynes tells us, went with her even by night. She never went to bed without decking herself with all her diamonds; and her most seductive hour was in the morning, when, in her bed, with her glorious dishevelled hair veiling her pillow, a-glitter with her jewels, she gave audience to her friends.

Such was the ravishing, ardent, passionate woman who was the first of many to carry Louis' heart by storm, and to be established in his palace as his mistress—to inaugurate for him a new life of pleasure, and to estrange him still more from his unhappy Queen, shut up with her prayers and her tears in her own room, with her tapestry, her books of history, and her music for sole relaxation. "The most innocent pleasures," Queen Marie wrote sadly at this time, "are not for me."

Under Madame de Mailly's rule the Court of Versailles awoke to a new life. "The little apartments grow animated, gay to the point of licence. Noise, merriment, an even gayer and livelier clash of glasses, madder nights." Fête succeeded fête in brilliant sequence. Each night saw its Royal debauch, with the King and his mistress for arch-spirits of the revels. There were nightly banquets, with the rarest wines and the most costly viands, supplemented by salads prepared by the dainty hands of Mademoiselle de Charolois, and ragouts cooked by Louis himself in silver saucepans. And these were followed by orgies which left the celebrants, in the last excesses of intoxication, to be gathered up at break of day and carried helpless to bed.

Such wild excesses could not fail sooner or later to bring satiety to a lover so unstable as Louis; and it was not long before he grew a little weary of his mistress, who, too assured of her conquest, began to exhibit sudden whims and caprices, and fits of obstinacy. Her jealous eyes followed him everywhere, her reproaches, if he so much as smiled on a rival beauty, provoked daily quarrels. He was drawn, much against his will, into her family disputes, and into the disgraceful affairs of her father, the dissolute Marquis de Nesle.

Meanwhile Madame de Mailly's supremacy was being threatened in a most unexpected quarter. Among the pupils of the convent school at Port Royal was a young girl, in whose ambitious brain the project was forming of supplanting the King's favourite, and of ruling France and Louis at the same time. The idle dream of a schoolgirl, of course! But to Félicité de Nesle it was no vain dream, but the ambition of a lifetime, which dominated her more and more as the months passed in her convent seclusion. If her sister, Madame de Mailly, had so easily made a conquest of the King, why should she, with less beauty, it is true, but with a much cleverer brain, despair? And thus it was that every letter Madame received from her "little sister" pleaded for an invitation to Court, until at last Mademoiselle de Nesle found herself the guest of Louis' mistress in his palace.

Thus the first important step was taken. The rest would be easy; for Mademoiselle never doubted for a moment her ability to carry out her programme to its splendid climax. It was certainly a bold, almost impudent design; for the girl of the convent had few attractions to appeal to a monarch so surrounded by beauty as the King of France. What the courtiers saw, says the Duc de Richelieu, was "a long neck clumsily set on the shoulders, a masculine figure and carriage, features not unlike those of Madame de Mailly, but thinner and harder, which exhibited none of her flashes of kindness, her tenderness of passion."

Even her manners seemed calculated to repel, rather than attract the man she meant to conquer; for she treated him, from the first, with a familiarity amounting almost to rudeness, and a wilfulness to which he was by no means accustomed. There was, at any rate, something novel and piquant in an attitude so different from that of all other Court ladies. Resentment was soon replaced by interest, and interest by attraction; until Louis, before he was aware of it, began to find the society of the impish, mocking, defiant maid from the convent more to his taste than that of the most fascinating women of his Court.