The King did not stop at imposing upon the Queen this painful cohabitation with mistresses and their brats. When he travelled, he put them all in the same carriage and even compelled them to eat elbow to elbow. Then came the worst: Louis made his new bastards legitimate and even declared them Bourbon princes. For them, he arranged royal weddings, going so far as to inaugurate the unheard of mixing of bastards with the legitimate Bourbons. He even wedded one of his bastard daughters to a "nephew of France", forcing the son of his brother Philippe to marry the last daughter he had fathered on Madame de Montespan. The court grumbled; the young man's parents were desperate, there were scenes, tears and very public scandals. The King exulted.
"Where will it all end, at this rate?" hissed Atto vehemently.
"If I have understood you, there is reason to fear for the future of the throne."
He stopped to catch his breath after detaching from the wall a large picture, the frame of which had seemed to him (erroneously) too massive not to hide a hidden chamber in its backing."I am afraid that one day the King may place his bastards in the line of succession to the throne. And that will be the end. It will mean that no longer will the Queen's son become King but anyone, just anyone, can do so. At that point, any plebeian will ask: Why not me?"
"Let us be seated a moment," suggested Atto, slumping onto a day-bed. "Let us rest awhile, then we shall resume our search."
I sat down too, in a great armchair, and at once gave a great yawn.
"Of course, the Most Christian King," I observed, picking up where Atto had left off, "consoled himself soon enough with all those mistresses after Maria's departure."
It was a provocation, in the hope that he might betray something of the current contacts between the Sovereign and the Connestabilessa. Atto took the bait.
"But what are you saying? Do you not listen when I am speaking? His first mistress, Louise de la Valliere, he used only to take his revenge on the Queen Mother, who had separated him from Maria by making him believe that he would soon forget her. But this affair with Louise was a triumph that came too late, a pointless reprisal against his old mother, the fruit of posthumous courage, a vindictive libation offered upon the sepulchre of his own heart," he declaimed with heartfelt pomposity.
What vain satisfaction, continued the Abbot, could the King gain from forcing the Queen his consort and the Queen Mother to dine at the same table as his mistress? Or by such behaviour as bringing her surreptitiously into his mother's apartments, or making her sit with him at the gaming table, together with his brother and sister-in-law, then making that known to the old Queen, like an insolent child? Yet Louis XIV was concerned to defend his own reputation, when he forced Louise to give birth with a mask over her face, assisted by chirurgeons who had been brought to her blindfold. Poor Louise was a docile instrument, unambitious and naturally modest, in the hands of a King with only pride where his heart should have been. Louis meant to impose her on his mother for as long as she lived, in a confrontation in which the real object of his vengeance — as with the hatred with which he persecuted Fouquet — was the looming shade of Mazarin.
When there was no longer anything to fight about, he dismissed her, already bored, despite the three children she had borne him.
"Louise was not made for the sophisticated social round, games and gossip, intrigues and all the coquetry and capriciousness of life at court," sighed Atto, yawning and stretching on his day-bed. "She was far from stupid, she loved reading, but she had no repertoire of jokes, no witty repartee, she coined no epigrams. In other words, she was not Maria," he concluded with an insolent little smile.
We rose and continued our hunt for Capitor's dish. We began by searching the room where there was a billiard table. On the walls it was adorned with various framed prints: some represented antique bas-reliefs, others were after the manner of Annibale Carracci, and included various portraits of famous men. We took them off the wall to see whether there might be a secret compartment behind them, but were disappointed. The felt of the billiard table, all covered in dust, had turned from bright green to the colour of dew. One solitary white ball lay in the middle of the table, abandoned and imprisoned, almost a metaphor for the heart of Louise de la Valliere, a hostage in the wilderness of Louis's indifference. Atto gave it a sharp tap, causing it to bounce on the opposite cushion, then continued his account.
Thus, the King very soon went to see Mademoiselle de la Valliere only to delight in the coquetry and provocations of another lady, Madame de Montespan, known as Athenais. One day, having to depart for the wars in Flanders, he left Louise alone at Versailles, four months with child, and took Madame de Montespan with him, in the Queen's retinue.
"Ladies of the court at war? And even the Queen?"
"But with all that you have read on your own account, did you not even know that?" he asked, as we left the billiard room and turned to the great dining hall.
Thence, we entered a room that led to the back of the garden, facing east. We went out. Here began a drive which led, as we were soon to discover, to a gracious little grotto."I tell you once more, I have been reading books, not false, lying newspapers," I replied, irked and trying to cover a certain embarrassment.
"Very well, like the Turks, the King enjoyed dragging with him to the wars all the conveniences he enjoyed at court: the finest furniture of the crown, the porcelain, the golden cutlery and all that was needed to organise ballets and firework displays in every town he came to; and, of course, women.
What a strange experience for villagers and country folk, I thought, to witness at close quarters that mad mixture of war and the festivities of the royal court, with plumed cavaliers escorting gilded carriages, unreal jewel cases concealing the most beautiful women in the realm!
"If only from the mud that spattered the decor, and from the King's face, thin and sunburnt," continued Atto, "and lastly from the tiredness of his women, exhausted by the voyage and the inhuman hours they were forced to keep, it was plain enough that this was no promenade in the park of Versailles. I remember one journey in particular. Passing Auxerre, where the women are rather good-looking, the inhabitants had all come out to see the royal family and the ladies in the carriage with the Queen. The ladies themselves put their heads out of the carriage windows to look. It was then that the good people of Auxerre burst out laughing: 'Ah, quelles sont laides' — 'How ugly they are!' The King laughed long and loud and spoke of nothing else that day," laughed the Abbot.
The Most Christian King brought the whole court with him during the War of Devolution, which Louis started after the death of Philip IV his father-in-law, to claim a part of Spanish Flanders as Maria Teresa's inheritance.
"He brought just about everyone, except Louise, you said. And what about the Queen?"
"Maria Teresa was the first to be compelled to go, seeing that, at least nominally, the war was being fought on her behalf. And whenever a city fell into French hands, she had to go and take possession of it officially."But Louise, a simple, passionate heart, decided to risk her pregnancy and brave the King's wrath by joining the court in Flanders. She arrived exhausted. The King, in no way impressed — on the contrary, much amused — listened to the description of the scene when the poor pregnant maiden slumped half dead, together with the ladies accompanying her, on the benches of Maria Teresa's antechamber, while the latter vomited out of fury and vexation.