Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

To show further her independence, she soon began to drive her lover to distraction by her caprices and her temper: "She tantalised, at once rebuffed and excited the King by the most adroit comedies and those coquetries which are the strength of her sex, assuring him that she would be delighted if he would transfer his affection to other ladies." And while the favourite was thus revelling in the insolence of her conquest, her supplanted sister was eating out her heart in Paris. "Her despair was terrible; the trouble of her heart refused consolation, begged for solitude, found vent every moment in cries for Louis. Those who were around her trembled for her reason, for her life.... Again and again she made up her mind to start for the Court, to make a final appeal to the King, but each time, when the carriage was ready, she burst into tears and fell back upon her bed."

As for Louis, chilled by the coldness of his mistress, distracted by her whims and rages, his heart often yearned for the woman he had so cruelly discarded; and separation did more than all her tears and caresses could have done, to awake again the love he fancied was dead.

When Madame de la Tournelle paid her first visit as Maîtresse en titre to Choisy, nothing would satisfy her but an escort of the noblest ladies in France, including a Princess of the Blood. Her progress was that of a Queen; and in return for this honour, wrung out of the King's weakness, she repaid him with weeks of coldness and ill-humour. She refused to play at cavagnol with him; she barricaded herself in her room, refusing to open to all her lover's knocking; and vented her vapours on him with, or without, provocation, until, as she considered, she had reduced him to a becoming submission. Then she used her power and her coquetries to wheedle out of him one concession after another, including a promise by the King to return unopened any letters Madame de Mailly might send to him. Nor was she content until her sister was finally disposed of by the grant of a small pension and a modest lodging in the Luxembourg.

Before the year closed Madame de la Tournelle was installed in the most luxurious apartments at Versailles, and Louis, now completely caught in her toils, was the slave of her and his senses, flinging himself into all the licence of passion, and reviving the nightly debauches from which the dead Comtesse had weaned him. And while her lover was thus steeped in sensuality, his mistress was, with infinite tact, pursuing her ambition. Affecting an indifference to affairs of State, she was gradually, and with seeming reluctance, worming herself into the position of chief Counsellor, and while professing to despise money she was draining the exchequer to feed her extravagance.

Never was King so hopelessly in the toils of a woman as Louis, the well-beloved, in those of Madame de la Tournelle. He accepted as meekly as a child all her coldness and caprices, her jealousies and her rages; and was ideally happy when, in a gracious mood, she would allow him to assist at her toilette as the reward for some regal present of diamonds, horses, or gowns.

It was after one such privileged hour that Louis, with childish pleasure, handed to his favourite the patent, creating her Duchesse de Chateauroux, enclosed in a casket of gold; and with it a rapturous letter in which he promised her a pension of eighty-thousand livres, the better to maintain her new dignity!

Having thus achieved her greatest ambition, the Duchesse (as we must now call her) aspired to play a leading part in the affairs of Europe. France and Prussia were leagued in war against the forces of England, Austria, and Holland. This was a seductive game in which to take a hand, and thus we find her stimulating the sluggard kingliness in her lover, urging him to leave his debauches and to lead his armies to victory, assuring him of the gratitude and admiration of his subjects. Nothing less, she told him, would save his country from disaster.

To this appeal and temptation Louis was not slow to respond; and in May, 1744, we find him, to the delight of his soldiers and all France, at the seat of war, reviewing his troops, speaking words of high courage to them, visiting hospitals and canteens, and actually sending back a haughty message to the Dutch: "I will give you your answer in Flanders." No wonder the army was roused to enthusiasm, or that it exclaimed with one voice, "At last we have found a King!"

So strong was Louis in his new martial resolve that he actually refused Madame de Chateauroux permission to accompany him. France was delighted that at last her King had emancipated himself from petticoat influence, but the delight was short-lived, for before he had been many days in camp the Duchesse made her stately appearance, and saws and hammers were at work making a covered way between the house assigned to her and that occupied by the King. A fortnight later Ypres had fallen, and she was writing to Richelieu, "This is mighty pleasant news and gives me huge pleasure. I am overwhelmed with joy, to take Ypres in nine days. You can think of nothing more glorious, more flattering to the King; and his great-grandfather, great as he was, never did the like!"

But grief was coming quickly on the heels of joy. The King was seized with a sudden and serious illness, after a banquet shared with his ally, the King of Prussia; and in a few days a malignant fever had brought him face to face with death. Madame de Chateauroux watched his sufferings with the eyes of despair. "Leaning over the pillow of the dying man, aghast and trembling, she fights for him with sickness and death, terror and remorse." With locked door she keeps her jealous watch by his bedside, allowing none to enter but Richelieu, the doctors, and nurses, whilst outside are gathered the Princes of the Blood and the great officers of the Court, clamouring for admittance.