As he descended the spiral staircase in front of me, I scrutinised from behind his bent and age-worn figure, still, however, made vibrant by the call to action. Looking at him, I was moved by the thought of the nature of his mission. For once, Melani had surprised me, revealing sentiments and ideas nobler than those I had ascribed to him, rather than the base ones which had, alas, all too often driven him in the past.
It was thus, with my soul overflowing with emotion, that I entered the other parts of the villa, to help Atto in his search for Capitor's three gifts, and above all, the dish.
We inspected the great hall on the ground floor: the shelves, the dressers, the drawers. Every single object (cutlery, glasses, ornaments) was where we had found it on our first visit. It was in that room that were exhibited, as we knew, a number of portraits of lovely and noble ladies of France (including the portrait of Maria which I had admired on our first tour of the premises). As I was rising after pointlessly stirring up the dust under a divan, I found myself face to face with one such portrait to which I had not previously accorded any attention.
"Madame de Montespan," announced Melani as he too approached that face of extraordinary, disturbing beauty. "Onetime favourite of the King of France. A relationship which lasted ten years and produced seven children; almost a second Queen."
I had just enough time to admire the abundant flesh of her bosom, the blue eyes fired with the will to elicit desire, the lips ready for kisses, the well-rounded arms. Atto had already passed to the next portrait.
"Louise de la Valliere," he announced. "His Majesty's first official adultery, as I have already told you," he added, pointing to that face of singular purity, crowned by thick silvery blonde tresses, a veritable synthesis of finesse, elegance and ethereal refinement, so much so that she seemed to have been formed by the Lord to manifest to humanity the blessed triad of grace, modesty and tenderness and almost magically, through her sea- coloured eyes, to win hearts and fidelity.
"How different they are!" I exclaimed. "This one is so pure, and the other so… how can I put it?"
"Turbid and sinful? Come straight out with it: that la Montespan was no angel one can see at a glance," laughed the Abbot, "but almost importantly, they are both far removed from the frank and impetuous temperament which radiated from Maria's person. These are two Frenchwomen, even if the one's the opposite of the other. Maria is Italian," concluded Atto, emphasising the last words, while his eyes lit up with renewed ardour at the thought of her. Now at last I realised from what a privileged and intimate observer I had hitherto had the good fortune to hear the tale of the drama which had so perturbed the soul of the Most Christian King. Thus, I trembled with the desire to hear the remainder of that old, unhappy story, now that I knew it to be still going on. Above all, I was by now convinced that Atto was on the point of meeting Maria to bear her some important embassy of love from the Most Christian King, and I was determined to discover what this might be.
"The King of France had many loves after the departure of Maria Mancini, if I remember correctly," I remarked, while the Abbot guided me into the salon with the portraits of kings and princes.
"He had many favourites," Atto corrected me, "and never fewer than two at a time."
"Two? Is that the custom among French sovereigns?"
"No, of course not," smiled the Abbot, opening a huge dresser full of Venetian crystal and Savona porcelain and rummaging inside it; "far from it." Never had such a thing been seen in France: a Queen and two titular mistresses, all three condemned to live shoulder to shoulder. Without counting the fact that Madame de Montespan was already married. Henri IV Louis's grandfather, had a mistress, but he never thought of imposing her on the Queen."
"I imagine that you see this as yet another unfortunate consequence of his abandoning Maria," said I, holding out the bait in my impatient desire to satisfy my curiosity about the present relations between the Most Christian King and the Connestabilessa.
"The deluge of pain that rained down on the heart of the young King, he transformed into a universal deluge, capable of submerging entire peoples for generations and generations," intoned the Abbot. "So Louis could not have Maria for his Queen? Then, let the other Queens pay! He could not have Maria as a woman by his side? So he surrounded himself by women without number, and all at the same time."
The King, explained Atto, always had at least two mistresses at the same time, who were in turn betrayed and abandoned for others, and this was a continuous process; nor could they ever be sure of the King's feelings or of what he intended for them. "The Three Queens" was what they called that constant triad."He who has suffered an injury needs to inflict it in turn upon others, ad infinitum," Melani summed up. "As he could not belong to Maria, Louis chose to share his time among many, and so to belong to none. With cold calculation, and at the same time, icy wrath, he divided his life among his many women: his wife, the long-term mistresses, the thousand lovers of a month or of a night, causing them all immense pain. Help me to lift this carpet, please."
He kept them all on tenterhooks, continuously, and not even the court could ever be sure whether the ladies with whom Louis loved to show himself off were really the favourites of the moment or if their star was already setting and their only use had become to serve as foils to divert attention from some new, secret preference. All submitted to the Sovereign's scourge; and none dared raise her head.
"The drastic change in the King's character was evident at court from the day after his marriage," said the Abbot. "Louis bundled all Maria Teresa's Spanish retinue off to Madrid."
The Queen, Atto continued, by now in full spate of recollection, opposed not the least resistance, but in exchange requested a boon from her spouse: to be able always to remain with him. Always. Louis granted her that. He ordered the Grand Marechal des Loges never to separate them. He kept his promise until her death: at the Louvre, at Fontainebleau, at Saint-Germain and even Versailles, he always slept beside her, abandoning his mistress's bed in the middle of the night and returning to the bedchamber of his legitimate consort where he remained until daylight. All this, without exception, without a word of explanation and without any excitement; even when Maria Teresa's bedchamber was crossed by wet-nurses bearing a bundle in their arms, the latest bastard of the King's mistresses, delivered in one of the adjoining rooms. Even the concession which had seemed to the poor Queen to be a boon, Louis transformed into a perverse and cruel reprisal.
"But how is that possible? The King's mistresses occupying rooms adjoining the Queen's bedchamber?" Here comes the best bit," replied Abbot Melani with sad irony. "His Majesty's favourite hunting grounds were among the Queen's maids of honour. And correspondingly, when Louis grew weary of some concubine, he would often cover his withdrawal by granting her a position in his consort's retinue. So much so that Maria Teresa always sighed 'I am fated to be served by my husband's mistresses.'"
The Abbot glanced curiously into a huge light-grey soup tureen, decorated with pomegranates of shining green and crimson porcelain.
"For two decades, the King sired a child a year, and I speak only of those who were recognised; but of these only six were children of the Queen. Seven came from la Montespan, the rest from other mistresses," Atto explained, arching his eyebrows. "Colbert, his Minister, for as long as he lived, was the King's dumb slave. He served as his intermediary, procuring wet-nurses, babes' clothing and compliant chirurgeons to assist at his mistresses' deliveries. He even found among his old servants adoptive families in which to raise the secret bastards, or in other words the children of the concubines of the moment," added the Abbot, prodding the stuffing of an armchair.