Who was this Mme Scarron who took the centre of the stage at Versailles only fourteeen years after her début in a walking-on part? Françoise d’Aubigné’s life had already been full of contradictions; nobody would have thought that she was born under a lucky star — misfortune seemed to be her birthright. The d’Aubignés were an old, noble, provincial family; Mme de Maintenon’s grandfather, Agrippa, an admirable person, was a friend of Henri IV and a Protestant; his son, her father, was a scamp, a rolling stone, in and out of prison for debt. When she was very small, d’Aubigné dragged her mother, her brother and her across the Atlantic to Martinique, and dying there, left them to struggle back to France as best they could. Then the mother died. Françoise, who had not a penny in the world, became a poor relation in the houses of various aunts and cousins. At the age of sixteen she was converted to Catholicism, not an easy process in the case of this serious, clever girl, intensely religious and versed in theology. Finally two doctors of divinity argued the question with each other, in front of her; their propositions seeming valid, she at last consented to turn. Fervent Roman Catholic as she became, she retained certain prejudices and practices from her Protestant youth; she never could get used to saying a rosary; never cared for the Virgin or mentioned the saints; always preferred Vespers to Mass. So she grew up, from hand to mouth, beautiful and clever but with the bleakest prospects that could be imagined. There seemed nothing for it but the convent, and against that she resolutely set her face. In spite of her piety, she loved the world. She went out in it, in Paris, and had many admirers but not a single suitor on account of her poverty. At last Scarron (always called the poet Scarron, though anything less poetic than himself and his works can hardly be imagined) proposed marriage. He had long been a feature of the literary world; was old (forty-two), paralysed, shaped like a Z and poor, but people flocked to his house because of his naughty wit.
Françoise d’Augibné would have snatched at any straw which rescued her from the nunnery; she accepted the poet’s offer. She was a perfect wife to him and was spared what she was later to call ‘those painful moments’, as Scarron was both impotent and helpless. She kept his house well; and there they entertained all that was most amusing, if not most edifying, in Paris society. The old fellow had a touching side, which other people felt, but she never did; she was never fond of him and always spoke in later years as if he had merely been a burden she was obliged to shoulder. Like her father and her brother, he was hopeless about money and no doubt she minded this; hers was an orderly soul. They were married for eight years; he died when she was twenty-five. The widow Scarron inherited nothing but debts; all the furniture of her husband’s lodgings had to be sold to pay them, including her portrait by Mignard and The Ecstasy of St Paul by Poussin which had been painted specially for Paul Scarron. This picture, now in the Louvre, was before her eyes every day in later life; the Duc de Richelieu, who had bought it from her, had sold it to the King and it hung in one of the rooms of the Grand Appartement. Mme Scarron was only saved from actual starvation by Anne of Austria who gave her a tiny allowance on which she struggled along, lodging in a convent, until Mme de Montespan opened new horizons for her.
Her brother was even more of a ne’er-do-well than her father had been. As soon as she was recognized as a powerful figure in the King’s entourage, she set about finding an heiress for him. Many rich families would have liked the alliance for their daughters in return for various benefits she could have obtained for them through the King and her friend Louvois. But the wretched brother always made difficulties and finally, it really seemed in order to annoy her, he married a poor little doctor’s daughter with no money, no brains and no connections. Mme de Maintenon was devoted to d’Aubigné; they laughed together; to her dying day she could never resist a joke. He did not like her nearly as much as she liked him. He hated the lectures which she thought it her duty to deliver when she saw or wrote to him; and although he accepted everything she did for him as a matter of course, he was for ever tormenting and teasing her.
It was d’Aubigné who put it about that she had had lovers while married to Scarron. He said she had once been found, dressed as a page, in bed with the Marquis de Villarceau. Now beautiful young women generally do have lovers, but in her case one may doubt it. Mme Scarron was careful of her reputation to an unattractive degree, saying over and over again that it mattered to her more than anything else: ‘Irreproachable behaviour is the cleverest policy’ (meilleure habileté) was her motto. Whereas all the unchaste old beauties of her generation were tormented by fear of hellfire, there is never a word in the letters she wrote to her spiritual directors which suggests that she felt remorse for any sins of the flesh committed when she was young. Since that particular temptation is practically irresistible, the greatest proof of her virtue is that she seems not to have understood the language of love. Mlle de Fontanges once said, exasperated, that Mme Scarron had advised her to divest herself of her passion for the King, exactly as if it were a garment that could be put on or off at will. Ninon de L’Enclos, the famous courtesan, with whom she was most friendly, said she was too awkward for love. She had the gifts of a mother as opposed to those of a wife or mistress; she was perfect with children, though she generally lost interest in them when they grew up.
Mme de Maintenon’s letters are not read as much as they deserve to be. At their best they are as witty as those of Mme de Sévigné. (She wrote to the Duc de Noailles one month of May: ‘The chapter of the green peas goes on. Looking forward to eating them, the pleasuré of having eaten them, and the joyful hope of soon eating more have been the sole topics of conversation the last four days. Certain ladies, having supped with the King find peas in their own rooms which they eat before going to bed.’) Her letters provide the key to her curious nature. She was worldly and religious, both to an unusual degree. This combination, which is far from rare, needs to be fully understood if it is not to look like hypocrisy. She herself truly thought that she hated the world. She never had words hard enough to condemn Versailles and the life at the Court, appearing to forget what a long, difficult and relentless struggle she had sustained in order to arrive at her great position there. She said, speaking of herself and Athénaïs, who made no bones about adoring the Court: ‘What does God do? He binds it to the one who hates it and sends away the one who loves it, for the salvation of both.’ And again: ‘I am filled with sadness and horror at the very sight of Versailles. That is what is called the World; that is where all passions are at work: love of money, ambition, envy, dissipation. How happy are those who have put the World behind them!’
She was for ever telling her sister-in-law Mme d’Aubigné, hardly out of the nursery and naturally all agog for high life, that she was lucky to lead an anonymous existence, and be able to spend hours alone in her room, quietly reading. ‘I wouldn’t place you here for anything. Love your husband and don’t make new friends.’
There was another contradiction. From her outward appearance, sober, quiet, self-controlled and dignified, and the fact that the King used to call her ‘Your Solidity’, it has often been assumed that she had a strong and reliable character. Nothing could be farther from the truth. She was easily influenced, a poor judge of human beings and, as will be seen, a far from loyal friend. She took people up with enthusiasm and dropped them again ruthlessly when it suited her to do so. She had an underlying melancholy, perhaps caused by the curious conflicts of her nature; and often said she wished she were dead. D’Aubigné once riposted to this ‘I hope you’ve made sure of marrying God the Father’.
Mme de Maintenon was tormented by migraines, as people sometimes are when they live with a dominating personality. Athénaïs, too, suffered from them, more than ever now. In December 1684 the King turned her out of her flat next to his and gave her the Appartement des Bains, with all its memories of happy days when first she lived at Versailles. Furious and miserable, she went down the Queen’s staircase.
10. THE YOUNG GENERATION
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sp; I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.
LORD MACAULAY
In 1685 the Dauphine had a third son, the Duc de Berri. ‘Ah my little Berri, I love you dearly, but you have killed me’, she used to say. Indeed, she was never well again — Madame told her correspondents that Mme de Maintenon had made the doctors see to it that she never would be; which is the kind of wild statement in which Madame specialized. The Dauphine appeared less and less at the Court and shut herself up in a dark little back room, with her Italian maid, a prey to melancholia. The doctors said that her illness was imaginary, so she got scant sympathy from the King, who naturally wanted her to play her part in public. She used to say she would have to die in order to prove that she had not been shamming; and in 1690 she did die and it was proved. Her lungs were ulcerated, her stomach gangrened and there were several abscesses in her intestine. The Dauphin had loved her at first but she showed her indifference to him too plainly, in spite of friendly warnings from Mme de Maintenon. By the time she died he had made other dispositions. He fell in love first with one and then another of his wife’s maids-of-honour. They were hastily married off, one to a Polignac, the other to a du Roure, and were never seen again at Versailles. Mme de Maintenon was certainly relieved by the death of this princess who was so disagreeable to her; the King hunted and gambled as if nothing had happened; and the only person who mourned her was Madame, who used to talk German to her and said that she had been somebody you could laugh with. She had a ready wit. One day the King’s exquisite daughter Marie-Anne de Conti, seeing her asleep, said to one of the ladies-in-waiting that the Dauphine was as ugly as when she was awake. The Dauphine then woke up and observed that she had not the advantage of being a love child. Madame wept copiously at the funeral; and extra tears were jerked because the Palatinate and Bavarian coats of arms were practically the same, so that they reminded her of other deceased dear ones. But in later years she discovered that the Dauphine had repeated to the King various disagreeable jokes they had had together, about Mme de Maintenon. The three little boys were taken over by the King — the Dauphin never showed much interest in them. He called them by their full titles: ‘M. le Duc de Bourgogne’ and so on, and they called him ‘Monseigneur’.
As the Dauphine never would appear in society, the young fashionables of the rising generation centred round the Dauphin, his half-sister Marie-Anne de Conti and her husband, and Conti’s younger brother, Prince de La Roche-sur-Yon. Now that Louise de La Vallière’s daughter Marie-Anne was grown up, the most beautiful women at Versailles were nothing to her. Mme de Sévigné says she was above humanity, you could see she was a daughter of the Gods; her scented bedroom was the very shrine of Venus. She had been married since she was thirteen to the Prince de Conti and was the first of Louis XIV’s bastards to marry into the royal family. The Conti brothers, like their cousins the Condés, were Princes of the Blood but not Children of France, since they were not descended from a Bourbon king but only from an uncle of Henri IV. They were nephews of the Grand Condé and great-nephews, through their mother, of Cardinal Mazarin — first cousins of Mary of Modena. So they had the same blood on both sides as Prince Eugène whom the younger brother resembled in his nature and his gifts. Their father was dead; he had been a most fascinating man, the model for Molière’s Don Juan. Little Marie-Anne cried when she heard that she was engaged. Louis XIV, always very fond of her, asked why, but she was too timid to say that she preferred the younger brother. She was not too timid, however, after a few days of marriage, to pronounce that her husband was no good at making love — which, coming from such a baby, surprised even the sophisticated courtiers at Versailles. The King sent for her, gave her a wigging and reduced her to tears; and after that the young couple got on quite well, but there were no children.
Marie-Anne was right in preferring the younger Conti to her husband, who was a nonentity. The brother was very different: valiant, brilliant and ambitious, adored by those who knew him, with all the gifts of a leader, he was often likened to Germanicus. He was just as charming to the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker as he was to the highest in the land, could be as frivolous as anybody and yet had as many friends in intellectual circles as among the playboys of the Court. He could discuss their special problems with magistrates and scientists; had read immensely and remembered what he had read; knew where to find the sources of information; was versed in astronomy and mathematics; had the genealogy of all the nobles by heart (a polite accomplishment in those days) and possessed a marvellous clarity of thought. With a gift for friendship, he chose his intimates well and then made their relationship truly profitable; he was courteous and never hurt anybody’s feelings. He was fond of making love and it was said of him that, like Caesar, he was every woman’s husband and every man’s wife. In warfare he was a hero. He attached the soldiers to him by his goodness and the officers by his affability: all ranks felt total confidence in him. He distinguished himself at the battles of Steinkirk and Neerwinden, and was known throughout Europe as a chivalrous adversary. He had been brought up with the Dauphin and was his greatest friend — their tutor, Bossuet, loved him more than a son. Even Mme de Maintenon was charmed by him.
But this splendid prince was born under an unlucky star. For one thing, his fortune was not great enough to support his rank. This would not have signified if he had pleased the King, but unluckily for him the King soon realized that he was worth a hundred of the Duc du Maine and was jealous on his son’s behalf. He blighted the young man’s career, so that with all his brilliant gifts he was able to make nothing of his existence. Now he is forgotten. However, while the princes were in their early manhood, it was taken as a matter of course that whenever the Dauphin should be called to the throne his cousin would be at his right hand. Life seemed to be full of promise.
In 1683 the Turks were surging into Europe. The King of France, whose chief enemy had always been the Emperor, was not displeased to see him in difficulties and refused to join an alliance against the Infidel, although Pope Innocent XI offered him Constantinople if he would do so. The Conti brothers and various other young bloods at Versailles, bored with peace at home, begged permission to go and fight the barbarians. The King consented; they went off; he had second thoughts and ordered them to come back; they turned the deaf ear. They joined up with their cousin Eugène, performed prodigies of valour and no doubt enjoyed themselves very much indeed. Unfortunately they had urged their friends at Versailles to keep in touch and letters passed to and fro. Now the King was fond of reading other people’s letters; it was one of the ways by which he knew what was happening under his enormous roof. The post was censored and the meatiest morsels were brought to him. He had a shock when he saw himself referred to by the younger Conti as a Monarch of the Stage. After that there was a whole bag of letters from Versailles to the French volunteers in Hungary, none of which was relished by the said monarch. Some of them made fun of him and Mme de Maintenon and complained that the dullness of Versailles now beggared description; there were several homosexual love-letters and, in the same fatal packet, one from Marie-Anne de Conti saying that she was obliged to drive out with Mme de Maintenon and an old freak called the Princess d’Harcourt, day after day. ‘Judge what fun this must be for me.’ The King sent for Marie-Anne and blasted her with his terrifying tongue. Three fashionable young men were exiled on account of this mail-bag. Another of the writers was the grandson of Maréchal de Villeroy, the King’s greatest friend — who said how lucky it was that the boy had only blasphemed in his letter: ‘God forgives’. Mme de Maintenon never forgave Marie-Anne de Conti.
The courtiers noticed that the King was in a difficult mood altogether at this time, 1685, the year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He suddenly exiled Cardinal de Bouillon, Grand Aumônier de France, and the Duke, his brother; some thought for an affair of sodomy, others that the Bouillons were altogether too grand and pretentious. They were furious; the Duke said ‘the
King is only an old gentleman in his château who has got one tooth left which he keeps to bite me with’. The brothers were hated at the Court, so nobody minded their departure. Then the King, for some reason, sent beautiful, thin Mlle de Crenan to the Bastille.
One evening there was a party at Marly; the Maréchal de Villeroy, the Duc de Roquelaure and the Marquis d’Antin, all intimate friends of the King’s, asked the Duc de Luxembourg to tell him that they were at the door. Louis XIV in his new, curmudgeonly mood, said ‘All right — they can go away.’
News now came of the death of Charles II; Milord Arran fell in a dead swoon in the Galerie des Glaces, which showed that he was nicer than most English people who were generally thought to hate their kings. ‘Now,’ said Mme de Sévigné, ‘the stage is set for some great acting, between the Prince of Orange, M. de Monmouth and that infinite quantity of Lutherans there are in England. It seems that Charles died more as a philosopher and an Englishman than as a Christian.’ This death was politically a serious blow to Louis XIV.
When the two Conti brothers got back from the war, Marie-Anne almost immediately fell ill with smallpox — she recovered but gave it to her husband. He seemed to be getting better and was sitting up in bed, joking with her, when he fell back, dead, leaving her a childless widow at nineteen. So her brother-in-law was now Prince de Conti and head of the family. The King, who had never liked him, and since the famous letters, could not bear the sight of him, exiled him from Versailles and he went to live at Chantilly with his uncle, the Grand Condé, who loved him more than his own children and married him to his grand-daughter.
Exquisite as she was, the Dowager, or, as she was more often called, to distinguish her from her sister-in-law, the Beautiful Princesse de Conti, never had much luck in love and never married again. The King of Morocco asked for her hand, and she could have married the Duc de Chartres, the son of Monsieur, but she preferred to be free. She was a good-natured soul, most kind and attentive to her mother, Louise de la Vallière, whom she visited regularly in her convent. Like her, she was dull. She always behaved decently, and Spanheim says that the fashion for virtue at Versailles was set by the piety of the late Queen, the goodness of the Dauphine, the indifference (to men) of Madame and the excellent behaviour of the lovely Princesse de Conti. She and the Grand Dauphin now became inseparable — he could hardly bear her out of his sight — but they never created an agreeable society, as they might have done. The Dauphin had no social gifts, he was too shy. When the day’s hunting was over he either took his sister to the Opéra in Paris or played cards with her and a few close friends. People thought that when he came to the throne he would live in Paris and abandon Versailles — also that he would never go to war since he was lazy and not in the least ambitious.