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Ch. 14: The Old Age of Madame de Montespan · Women of Versailles: The Court of Louis XIV

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