French king and his mistresses get the royal-book treatment

ALTHOUGH he was not the celebrated rake and seducer his grandfather Henri IV was, Louis XIV (1638-1715) was undoubtedly a man who loved women: intellectually, socially -- and physically, as Antonia Fraser makes clear in her book “Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King.”

Fraser traces the monarch’s fascination with strong-minded women to his intelligent, dynamic mother, Anne of Austria, who served as the regent after the death of her husband, Louis XIII, when their boy was a child of 4. Anne devoted herself to her elder son, who adored her in return. She set a challenging standard for the women who later entered the king’s life.

Had he married an equally spirited princess, Louis XIV might have become a devoted husband. But Anne and her advisor Cardinal Mazarin chose the eldest daughter of Philip IV of Spain. Raised in her father’s archly conservative court, Marie-Therese was religious, proper and dull. She never learned to speak French well, surrounded herself with Spanish servants, lap dogs and dwarfs, and shunned the public duties of royalty that the king relished.

Not surprisingly, the intelligent, active Louis not only took mistresses but also spent much of his time with women of sharper intellect and wit.

He would have been happier with his younger brother Philippe’s wife, the charming Henriette-Anne of England. Her conversation delighted Louis, and during his visits, he became infatuated with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Louise de la Valliere.

The pious La Valliere spent several weeks wrestling with her conscience before convincing herself that “sleeping with the King was a kind of holy duty,” as Fraser writes. She became the first of the king’s three most important mistresses.

When La Valliere’s charms began to cloy, the king shifted his attention to the dazzling Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan. Fraser offers the apt comparison: “Like Versailles, she was expensive -- and glorious.” While La Valliere came from minor nobility, Mme. de Montespan was the descendant of two great aristocratic families whose ancient blood hadn’t been tainted by marriages to the upstart Medicis -- as the Bourbons’ had.

In contrast to the virginal La Valliere, Mme. de Montespan was temperamental, profligate and unabashedly sensual at a time when sex was regarded as something women should dutifully endure. She also had a husband who vigorously and vocally objected to his wife’s adultery with the king, but where there’s a royal will, there’s a way. Mme. de Montespan became maitresse en titre.

She presented the king with a succession of illegitimate children, all of whom were put in the care of Francoise d’Aubigne, the widow of the minor playwright Paul Scarron. To the surprise of the court, this gentle, intelligent woman eventually succeeded the fiery Montespan in the king’s affections as Mme. de Maintenon.

Fraser’s sympathies clearly lie with Mme. de Maintenon, which is understandable. While her piety was undoubtedly sincere, La Valliere tended to melodrama. Mme. de Montespan is not a likable character -- at least to readers separated from her beauty and wit by more than three centuries. Mme. de Maintenon’s quiet sensibility offered Louis comfort and calm during the often tumultuous latter part of his reign. He would later say to her, “Kings have majesty, and popes have sanctity, but you have solidity.”

Fraser argues convincingly that Mme. de Maintenon became involved with the king through a desire to save his soul. As Louis and Mme. de Montespan were both married, their relationship was considered a double adultery -- a far graver sin than his philandering with La Valliere. Mme. de Maintenon initially wanted to be the king’s best friend. She was certainly no sensualist, and when gossips suggested she wanted to replace Montespan, she wrote, regarding intimate relations: “They don’t understand my distance from these sorts of commerce nor the distance which I want to inspire in the King.”

But Fraser notes that shortly after Mme. de Maintenon wrote these words, “she decided that a best friend’s duty to Louis XIV did unfortunately include sleeping with him, in order to prevent other more frivolous, less religious-focused people from doing it without her own pure motives.”

In 1683, the dutiful, dreary Marie-Therese died. Three years later, Louis XIV probably entered a secret, morganatic marriage with Mme. de Maintenon. Although no documentary evidence exists for the union, and Mme. de Maintenon refused to confirm that it ever took place, Fraser cites the overwhelming indirect evidence. The king’s salvation was assured, and Mme. de Maintenon’s “mission” was finally achieved. Louis had flirtations and infatuations, notably with Marie-Adelaide of Savoy, the wife of his grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne, but there were no more maitresses en titre.

Drawing on letters, diaries and memoirs to support her own eminently readable prose, Fraser makes the romances and scandals of the 17th century seem as lively as the latest gossip about Nicole Richie, Tom Cruise or Paris Hilton.

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Charles Solomon is the author of many books, including “Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation.”