Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King by Antonia Fraser Page B

Bassin d'Encelade, c. 1730, by Jacques Rigaud. Châteaux de Versailles et de
Trianon (©Photo RMN/Gérard Blot).
Louis XIV Welcomes the Elector of Saxony to Fontainebleau, 1714, by Louis de
Silvestre. Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon (photo: Bridgeman Art Library).
View of the Château and Orangerie at Versailles , c. 1699, by Étienne Allegrain.
Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon (photo: Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library).
Bonne, Nonne et Ponne, date unknown, by François Desportes. Musée du
Louvre, Paris (© Photo RMN/Daniel Arnaudet).
Detail of wood-carving round the windows of the King's chamber at
Versailles (© Photo RMN/Christian Jean & Jean Schormans).
Quatrième chambre des appartements, 1696, etching and dry-point by Antoine
Trouvain. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Prints & Photographs.
La Charmante Tabagie, late 17th century, engraving by Nicolas Bonnart.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Prints & Photographs.
The Cascade at Marly, from Gardens of Marly, early 18th century French
School. Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris (photo: Archives
Charmet/Bridgeman Art Library).
Louis XIV, 1701, by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Musée du Louvre, Paris (© Photo
RMN/Gérard Blot).

AUTHOR'S NOTE
‘Magnificence and gallantry were the soul of this court': in writing about Louis XIV and his women, this is the contemporary verdict that I have borne in mind. Certainly I have hoped to convey magnificence in this book. How else could one write about the man who created Versailles in the early part of his personal rule and made it his official seat in 1682? There is extravagance inside and out; feasts to which only the King with his Gargantuan appetite could do justice, huge flower beds with every plant changed daily, multitudinous orange trees – the King's favourites – in silver pots, terraces where the court was driven indoors at night by the dominant perfume of a thousand tuberoses, money flowing forth like the fountains the King was so fond of commissioning, so that ornamental water itself became a symbol of power … There are wildly obsequious courtiers such as the Duc d'Antin, who cut down his own avenue overnight because it impeded the view from the visiting monarch's bedroom, or the Abbé Melchior de Polignac, thoroughly drenched in his court costume, who assured the King that the rain at Marly did not wet.
And I have certainly depicted gallantry in all the many contemporary senses of the word, from friendship shading to love, the subtle art of courtship, the more frivolous and even dangerous pursuit of flirtation, down to sensual libertinage ending in sex. It is easy to understand why seventeenth-century France was popularly supposed to be a paradise for its women, who enjoyed ‘a thousand freedoms, a thousand pleasures'. But if gallantry – or sex – is one of my themes, then religion is another. It is in the connection between the two that I believe the fascination of Louis XIV's relationships with his mistresses properly lies. This was the century in which penitent Magdalen was the favourite saint in France: symbolically his mistresses were painted, loose hair flowing, as Magdalen in their prime, while flouting the rules of the Church in the most flagrant manner possible; their attempts to incarnate the saint's own penitence would come later. Thus the Catholic Church's struggles for the salvation of the King's soul strike a sombre note in the celebratory music of Versailles from the King's youth onwards and cannot be silenced. Lully is there with his graceful allegorical Court Ballets in which the King (and his ladies) danced; but he is also there with his themes of lamentation for the King to mourn.
My study is not however entirely limited to the mistresses of Louis XIV: possibly Marie Mancini, principally Louise de La Vallière and Athénaïs de Montespan as well as the enigmatic, puritanical Madame de Maintenon, whose precise status was doubtful. I had once