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19 - Women of Versailles- the Court of Louis XIV by Arthur-Leon Imbert de Saint-Amand · Women of Versailles- the Court of Louis XIV

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  Speaker 1: Section nineteen of Women of Versailles The Court of Louis
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  Speaker 1: the fourteenth by Artur Leon Ambert de Saint Amo, translated
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  Speaker 1: by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. This LibriVox recording is in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. Read by Pamela and Nagami, Chapter fourteen, the
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  Speaker 1: Old Age of Madame de Montispod. It is through their
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  Speaker 1: pride that those are punished to have sinned. By pride
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  Speaker 1: and haughty natures are nearly always those whom Providence condemns
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  Speaker 1: to cruel humiliations. Of all the favorites of Louis the
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  Speaker 1: fourteenth Madame de Montispod had been the most arrogant and despotic.
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  Speaker 1: She was also the most humiliated. Unable to accustom herself
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  Speaker 1: to her deposition, she remained more than ten years at court,
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  Speaker 1: although she had become burdensome to the king and to herself.
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  Speaker 1: People said she was like one of those unhanf happy
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  Speaker 1: souls who come back to expiate their faults in the
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  Speaker 1: places where they committed them. There was a remnant of
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  Speaker 1: irony in wrath and the semi conversion of this haughty
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  Speaker 1: Montemar going to see Madame de Mantineau one day, she
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  Speaker 1: met there the couree and the gray sisters of Versailles,
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  Speaker 1: who had come to attend a charitable meeting. Do you know, Madame,
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  Speaker 1: she said, accosting her, that your antechamber is wonderfully adorned
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  Speaker 1: for your prayers. The king continued to see the mother
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  Speaker 1: of the legitimated children every day after Mass, he went
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  Speaker 1: to spend a few minutes with her, but as it were,
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  Speaker 1: from duty not pleasure. In sixteen eighty six, at Marlee,
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  Speaker 1: she said to him, in a moment of exasperation, I
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  Speaker 1: have a favor to ask you leave to me the
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  Speaker 1: care of entertaining the people of the second carriage and
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  Speaker 1: of diverting the anti chamber. Between the the fourteenth and
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  Speaker 1: his former mistress, there was neither unreserve, confidence, love, nor friendship.
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  Speaker 1: What remained after their liaison was not even a souvenir,
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  Speaker 1: not even respect, but only remorse, devoured by ambition and
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  Speaker 1: by scruples, dragged hither and thither by her passions, as
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  Speaker 1: if by so many wild horses. Madame de Montespont was
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  Speaker 1: for many long years the prey of that daily, hourly struggle,
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  Speaker 1: which is one of the most painful psychological agonies that
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  Speaker 1: can be imagined. Mosieur the racine of the Christian pulpit.
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  Speaker 1: The moralist preacher, so skillful in sounding the depths of
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  Speaker 1: the female heart, has described better than anyone else, those
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  Speaker 1: fitful repentances which entail all the bitterness of penitence, without
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  Speaker 1: giving any of its consolations. These hearts which the world
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  Speaker 1: has always occupied, and which wish to consecrate to God,
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  Speaker 1: the remains of a holy, mundane existence. What a buckler
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  Speaker 1: of brass? Do they not oppose to grace? They may
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  Speaker 1: seek for the Kingdom of God and the hidden treasure
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  Speaker 1: of the Gospel, but it is like wretched slaves condemned
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  Speaker 1: to seek for gold through hard rocks and toilsome mines.
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  Speaker 1: It seems as if in virtue they are playing another's part.
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  Speaker 1: Although they are seeking salvation and good faith. There appears
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  Speaker 1: in them a nameless constraint and strangeness which makes one
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  Speaker 1: think they are merely pretending. Madame de Montespon wanted to
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  Speaker 1: leave the court, but she had not the courage. She
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  Speaker 1: could not say to herself, like Saint Augustine in his confessions,
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  Speaker 1: these trifles of trifles, these vanities of vanities, draw me
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  Speaker 1: by my garment of flesh and whisper in my ear,
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  Speaker 1: and are you sending us away? What? After this moment
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  Speaker 1: shall we be no longer with you forever? This interior
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  Speaker 1: struggle was but a duel between myself and me. The
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  Speaker 1: progress that goes on between the first symptoms of repentance
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  Speaker 1: and the most complete and absolute penitence is an interesting
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  Speaker 1: one to study. The former favorite ended by comprehending the
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  Speaker 1: truth of Massillon's words. What comparison is there between the
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  Speaker 1: frightful remorse of conscience, that hidden worm which gnaws us incessantly,
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  Speaker 1: that sadness of crime which undermines and brings us down,
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  Speaker 1: that weight of iniquity which overwhelms us, that interior sword
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  Speaker 1: which pierces us, and the lonely sorrow of penitence which
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  Speaker 1: worketh salvation, My God? Can one complain of thee when
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  Speaker 1: one has known the world and the thorns of the cross?
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  Speaker 1: Are they not flowers when compared to those that besie
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  Speaker 1: at the paths of iniquity? There is an undercurrent of
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  Speaker 1: morality in public opinion which makes the crowd contemplate with
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  Speaker 1: a sort of pleasure the decay and ruin of certain fortunes.
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  Speaker 1: Madame de Montespon no longer met friendly glances in the court,
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  Speaker 1: which had lately been filled with her flatterers. Thus it
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  Speaker 1: is that weis nearly always finds its chastisement here below.
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  Speaker 1: Short as it is, life is long enough for the
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  Speaker 1: vengeance of God to be accomplished, even on the earth.
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  Speaker 1: After long clinging to the wrecks of her fortune and
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  Speaker 1: her beauty, like a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of
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  Speaker 1: his vessel, she who had formerly been called the Mistress
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  Speaker 1: thundering and triumphant, at last resigned herself to retirement. On
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  Speaker 1: March fifteenth, sixteen ninety one, she caused Bassuet to inform
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  Speaker 1: the King that she had chosen her course of action
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  Speaker 1: and would this time abandon Versailles forever. Thus the prelate
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  Speaker 1: who had essayed sixteen years before to wrest her from
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  Speaker 1: the clasp of guilty passions, was the same to whom
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  Speaker 1: she now had recourse to break the last link of
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  Speaker 1: the chain. And yet she still had hesitations and regrets.
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  Speaker 1: A month after this pious resolution, Donjo wrote, Madame de
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  Speaker 1: Montespaint has been at Clanille for several days and has
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  Speaker 1: gone back to Paris. She says she has not absolutely
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  Speaker 1: given up the court that she will see the king sometimes,
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  Speaker 1: and that in fact they have been somewhat hasty and
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  Speaker 1: unfurnishing her apartment. But the favorite had been taken at
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  Speaker 1: her word. Her quarters in the Chateau of Versailles were
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  Speaker 1: thenceforth occupied by the Duc de men. She was never
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  Speaker 1: again to see the theater of her sorry triumphs for
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  Speaker 1: the King. Her departure was deliverance. Madame de Montespin lived
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  Speaker 1: by turns at the abbey of Fontevreaux, where her sister
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  Speaker 1: was abbess, at the waters of Bourbon, where she went
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  Speaker 1: every summer, at the Chateau of Woaron, which she had purchased,
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  Speaker 1: and at the Convent of Saint Joseph, situated in Paris,
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  Speaker 1: on the site now occupied by the Ministry of War.
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  Speaker 1: In this convent she received the most notable personages of
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  Speaker 1: the court. The only arm chair in her salon was
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  Speaker 1: her own. All France went there, says Saint Simon. She
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  Speaker 1: spoke to each one like a queen, and as to visits,
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  Speaker 1: she paid none, not even to Monsieur nor Madame, nor
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  Speaker 1: the Grand Mademoiselle, nor to the Hotel Conde. There was
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  Speaker 1: a superbly furnished chamber at the chateau of Woaron, and
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  Speaker 1: though the king never went there, it was called the
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  Speaker 1: King's chamber. From time to time the fallen favorite dream
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  Speaker 1: still of that scepter of the left hand, which she
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  Speaker 1: had once wielded with such an audacity of pride. She
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  Speaker 1: was by turns ashamed and proud of being the mother
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  Speaker 1: of legitimated children. But by slow degrees serious thoughts displaced
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  Speaker 1: those of vanity and spite. The world was vanquished by heaven.
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  Speaker 1: Scandal gave way to edification. The penitent arrived not only
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  Speaker 1: at remorse, but at macerations, fasts and haircloths. This woman,
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  Speaker 1: once so fastidious, so elegant, limited herself to the coarsest
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  Speaker 1: under linen, and wore a belt and garter studded with
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  Speaker 1: iron points. She came at last to give all she
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  Speaker 1: had to the poor. For several hours a day she
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  Speaker 1: busied herself in making coarse clothing for them. Close to
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  Speaker 1: her chateau of Wochrol, she found it a hospital of
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  Speaker 1: which she was rather the servant than the superior. She
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  Speaker 1: nursed the sick herself and dressed their sores. As Monsieur
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  Speaker 1: Pierre Clement has said so well in the fine study
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  Speaker 1: he has devoted to her. The scandal had been great,
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  Speaker 1: the defiance of morality, law, and the prescriptions of religion
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  Speaker 1: insolent and prolonged. But when they proceed from so haughty
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  Speaker 1: a nature, repentance and humility have redoubled value. By her
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  Speaker 1: confessor's order, she resigned herself to the act which cost
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  Speaker 1: her most. She wrote a most humbly worded letter to
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  Speaker 1: her husband, asking his pardon, and offering either to return
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  Speaker 1: to him if he would deign to receive her, or
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  Speaker 1: to go to any residence which he might choose to
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  Speaker 1: assign for her. Monsieur de Montespont did not even answer.
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  Speaker 1: According to Sansimon, the former favorite was so tormented by
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  Speaker 1: the terrors of death in her last years the she
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  Speaker 1: hired several women whose only occupation was to watch with her.
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  Speaker 1: At night. She slept with her curtains open, plenty of
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  Speaker 1: candles in her chamber, and her watchers around her, whom
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  Speaker 1: every time she woke she wanted to find chatting, playing cards,
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  Speaker 1: or eating, so as to be sure they were not drowsy.
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  Speaker 1: I have difficulty in believing such an assertion to be exact.
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  Speaker 1: Madame de Montespon was too proud for such pusillanimity. Fear
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  Speaker 1: did not enter her soul. It is certain that she
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  Speaker 1: died with as much dignity as courage, even by Saint
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  Speaker 1: Simon's own avowal. In May seventeen o seven, when she
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  Speaker 1: started for the baths of Bourbon, she was not ill,
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  Speaker 1: and yet she had a presentiment that her end was approaching.
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  Speaker 1: Under its influence, she had paid all the pensions she
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  Speaker 1: was in the habit of giving for two years in advance,
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  Speaker 1: and doubled her customary alms. Hardly had she arrived at
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  Speaker 1: Bourbon when she took to her bed, never again to
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  Speaker 1: leave it. Face to face with death, she neither defied
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  Speaker 1: nor feared it. Father, she said to the Capuchin who
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  Speaker 1: was assisting her at the last moments, exhort me, as
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  Speaker 1: an ignorant person, as simply as you can. After summoning
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  Speaker 1: all her domestics around her, she asked pardon for the
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  Speaker 1: scandal she had given, and thanked God for permitting her
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  Speaker 1: to die in a place where she was distant from
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  Speaker 1: the children of her sin. When her soul had departed,
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  Speaker 1: her body, once so beautiful, so flattered, became the apprenticeship
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  Speaker 1: of the surgeon of a steward from I don't know where,
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  Speaker 1: who happened to be at Bourbon, and who wanted to
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  Speaker 1: open it without knowing how to begin. There was a
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  Speaker 1: dispute between the priests and cannons when the coffin was
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  Speaker 1: taken to the church, where it was to remain until
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  Speaker 1: it could be sent to Poitier and placed in a
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  Speaker 1: family tomb. The death of a woman who, for more
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  Speaker 1: than thirty years, from sixteen sixty to sixteen ninety one,
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  Speaker 1: had played so great a part at court caused no
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  Speaker 1: impression there. Louis the fourteenth had long considered his former
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  Speaker 1: mistress as dead to him. Donjoux contented himself with writing
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  Speaker 1: in his journal Saturday May twenty eighth, seventeen o seven,
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  Speaker 1: at Marly, before the king went out hunting, it was
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  Speaker 1: learned that Madame de Montespon died yesterday at Bourbon at
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  Speaker 1: three o'clock in the morning. The king, after chasing a stag,
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  Speaker 1: promenaded in the gardens until night. The Duke du Mens,
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  Speaker 1: the Count de Toulouse, and the Duchesses of Bourbon and
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  Speaker 1: Charts were formally prohibited to wear mourning for their mother, Daudont,
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  Speaker 1: her only legitimate child, put on black garments, but he
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  Speaker 1: was too good a courdier to be sad when the
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  Speaker 1: king was not so. He received his sovereign at Petibouick
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  Speaker 1: a few days afterward, and in one single night had
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  Speaker 1: an alley of chestnut trees, which was not to the
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  Speaker 1: master's taste removed. As to Madame de Montespond, no one
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  Speaker 1: mentioned her name again. Such is the world, It is
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  Speaker 1: not worth the trouble of loving it. And of section
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  Speaker 1: nineteen