The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (15 page)

The King himself was generally somewhat taciturn, although he knew how to be a delightful conversationalist. The diplomat Ezechiel Spanheim said that the King ‘spoke little but to the point’ and that in his private conversation he contrived to blend majesty and affability in a manner that was neither too haughty nor informal. Mme de Maintenon’s niece, Mme de Caylus, said that in a few well-chosen words the King could wrap up almost any subject that arose. When he talked seriously, people were impressed by his knowledge and charmed by the way he displayed it. When he discoursed in a lighter vein, it was ‘with infinite grace, with a noble and subtle turn of phrase which I have never known in anyone but him’. His sister-in-law the Duchesse d’Orléans said he could be ‘truly agreeable company’ while Saint-Simon conceded, ‘No man of fashion could tell a tale or set a scene better than he, yet his most casual speeches were never lacking in natural and conscious majesty.’
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Though the King was naturally drawn towards witty people, and though he was perfectly capable of acquitting himself well in such company, he knew he had to be exceptionally guarded in his social dealings. Louis was well aware of the harm that could be caused by apparently inconsequential remarks and when his son was very young he impressed on him the overriding importance of circumspection. ‘It is not merely in important negotiations that princes must watch what they say; this is also true of their most ordinary and intimate conversations,’ he cautioned.

Unpleasant as this restraint may be it is absolutely necessary for those in our position to speak of nothing lightly … Things that would be meaningless in the mouth of a private individual often become important when spoken by a prince. He cannot show the slightest disdain towards anyone without wounding him to the heart … One of the best solutions for this is to do more listening than talking, because it is very hard to talk a great deal without saying too much. Even a pleasant conversation about seemingly unimportant things will sometimes lead to the most hidden ones … Little harm has ever come from not having said enough … but infinite misfortunes have resulted from having said too much.
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The King’s reserve towards his courtiers was not dictated solely by a fear of causing offence, but also because he believed it essential to the preservation of his mystique. The Comte de Bussy declared, ‘By nature the King loves society, but he holds himself back out of policy.’ He explained that the King feared the French tendency to take advantage of attempts at familiarity, leading inevitably to their respecting him less. Comments by the King support this interpretation. He warned his son, ‘Those who are closest to the Prince, being the first to know his weakness … are also the first to abuse it.’ When his grandson was setting out to assume the Spanish Crown, Louis issued the blunt prohibition, ‘Never have an attachment for anybody.’
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The King’s aloofness was doubtless encouraged by the fact that when he did permit himself to form close bonds with the Marquis de Vardes and the Duc de Lauzun, these two men let him down badly. After they proved unworthy of his affection, the King was said to have commented bitterly that ‘he had looked for friends and found only intriguers’. Both men were punished harshly by Louis, whose anger at such misdemeanours was demonstrated by his remark to his son that ‘my rebel subjects when they have had the audacity to take up arms against me have perhaps provoked me to less indignation than those who, while remaining close to me paid me more respect with greater assiduity than all the rest, when I was well aware that they were betraying me and had no true respect for me or true affection of the heart.’
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The King was so inscrutable that it was impossible for courtiers to tell from his exterior whether or not things were going well for him. During the Dutch war Primi Visconti noted, ‘The King conducts himself in such a way that one does not know when he is victorious or when he loses. Since the start of his reign he has never been seen to be angry and he has never once sworn.’ The curé of Versailles, Hébert, confirmed this when he praised the King’s ‘perfect equanimity’ which gave no indication ‘whether his affairs had succeeded or if they had had some disappointing outcome’. In 1687 it was considered extraordinary when the King emerged red-faced and angry from a meeting with the Papal Nuncio, and it was clear that something exceptional had occurred to put ‘the most self-possessed prince in the world’ so out of countenance.
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The King had certainly followed the advice of his late godfather, Cardinal Mazarin, to ‘cultivate that kingly quality of dissimulation which nature has bestowed so lavishly upon you’. He was indeed so skilled at disguising his true feelings that courtiers had no way of knowing how they stood with him. The Marquis de Sourches commented, ‘The King was the most difficult man in the world to know, often making much of people in public when he was dissatisfied with them,’ and the result was that courtiers sometimes failed to realise they had displeased him until they fell irrevocably from favour. In 1693, for example, the court was amazed when the King suddenly dismissed his chief physician, d’Aquin, who until then had been regarded as ‘the best courtier ever’ and thought to possess ‘infinite credit with his master’. Saint-Simon claimed that only the night before, ‘the King had never talked so much to d’Aquin as at his supper … and had never seemed more kindly disposed to him.’
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During the Affair of the Poisons there were other instances when the King behaved similarly. In particular, he continued to treat the Maréchal de Luxembourg with every appearance of cordiality until the very moment when he was ordered to prison on suspicion of sorcery and poisoning.

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The King might take care that his courtiers could never tell what he was thinking but, conversely, he thought it desirable that they could keep little hidden from him. Colbert noted, ‘All things, great and small, important and trifling, are equally well known to this prince, who never misses an opportunity to make himself acquainted with everything.’ ‘He wants to know everything,’ wrote Primi Visconti, noting that Louis was not just tireless in collecting information from ministers, Presidents of
Parlement
and judges but also from his mistresses, who were expected to brief him on all the love affairs going on at court. Visconti concluded, ‘In any one day little happens of which he is ignorant and there are few people whose reputation and habits he does not know. He has a perspicacious eye and knows the inmost life of everyone.’
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According to Saint-Simon, ‘The King was even more interested in gossip than people imagined, although he was known to be vastly inquisitive,’
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He claimed that Louis employed his palace guards to spy on courtiers and certainly private letters were intercepted by the postal service. If they contained anything of interest they were brought to the King’s attention.

Far from being ashamed of such practices the King believed it essential that he remain abreast of even comparatively insignificant developments at court. He told his son that no ruler could underestimate the importance of ‘keeping an eye on the whole earth … of being informed of an infinite number of things that we are presumed to ignore, of seeing around us what is hidden from us with the greatest care, of discovering the most remote ideas and the most hidden interests of our courtiers.’ He did not hide that he considered this one of his more ‘pleasant duties’, confiding with endearing honesty, ‘I don’t know, finally, what other pleasures we would not abandon for this one for the sake of curiosity alone.’
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Nearly twenty years after writing this the King would be shaken to discover that despite the energy he devoted to keeping his courtiers under surveillance large numbers had engaged in dubious activities without his knowledge.

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At times the fawning and sycophancy surrounding the King reached absurd levels. Once, when the Abbé de Polignac was walking with the King in the garden of Marly, Louis’s private retreat near Versailles, it started to rain and the King expressed concern that the Abbé’s cassock afforded him little protection. ‘Sire, that makes no difference, the rain is not wet at Marly,’ the Abbé simpered. The Duc d’Uzès professed an equally strong conviction that the forces of nature were in thrall to the King. When Louis asked him on what day his wife’s baby was expected, he answered, ‘Sire, the day it pleases your Majesty.’ The Duc de Richelieu was scarcely less effusive, declaring on one occasion, ‘I would rather die than go two months without seeing the King.’
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The King recognised the dangers of excessive flattery and advised his grandson to employ men who dared to tell him unpalatable truths, rather than seeking always to please. To his son he claimed that he sometimes tested his courtiers ‘by encouraging them to praise me even for things that I believed I had done badly, only to reproach them for it immediately.’ There is an anecdote of Primi Visconti that supports this: he relates that after biting into a nasty pear, the King teased ‘the perfect courtier’, the Maréchal de Gramont, by exclaiming, ‘What a delicious fruit! Taste it, Monsieur le Maréchal!’ The Maréchal fell into the trap, proclaiming it ‘an exquisite fruit’, whereupon the King burst out laughing and mischievously offered the pear to other courtiers for their appraisal.
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However, the King was not always so good at detecting sycophancy. One day he was playing backgammon when he made a move that might have been against the rules. The onlookers declined to settle the matter so, when the Comte de Gramont entered, the King appealed to him to adjudicate. Without hesitation Gramont ruled against the King, prompting Louis to demand how he could be so sure without knowing all the circumstances. The King was somewhat nettled when Gramont told him that it must have been absolutely clear that he was in the wrong, for otherwise the courtiers would have unanimously taken his side.
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All this meant that although the King was the object of extravagant adulation, he could never be truly confident that his nobility loved him. There was no doubt that he enjoyed their respect – Primi Visconti wrote, ‘They are as afraid of the King as schoolboys of their master’ – but the extent of their affection for him was debatable. Having noted that the courtiers were in a state of utter subjection to the King, the German Ezechiel Spanheim added, ‘There are not many of them, perhaps, whose acclamations and homage are truly sincere and spring as much from heartfelt sentiments as from self-interest or fear. Without doubt respect has a greater part in it than inclination.’
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The King did not have a stronger bond with his poorer subjects, making little attempt to endear himself to the public. By the 1670s he rarely appeared in Paris and his attitude to his capital was one of marked ambivalence. He took satisfaction in being the ruler of one of the world’s great cities, and lavished care and expense on urban improvement projects. But while he declared that he wanted ‘to do for Paris what Augustus did for Rome’, he had no love for the city and the Marquis de Sourches actually suggested that he had ‘an extreme aversion’ for it. In 1670 the Savoyard ambassador reported that the mere prospect of spending some time in Paris was enough to put the King in a bad mood; by 1687 it excited comment if Louis even travelled through the city, rather than following his usual practice of making a detour in order to avoid it.
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The King’s distaste for his capital stemmed largely from his love of fresh air and outdoor pursuits, which were denied him in Paris, but he also did not forget that the capital had been disloyal to the Crown during the civil unrest that had occurred during his youth. His sensitivity on such matters is illustrated by the comments he made for the benefit of his son following the 1666 Great Fire of London. He observed that since London had sided against King Charles I during the English Civil War it might seem an obvious assumption that it was ‘not a great misfortune’ for the English monarchy ‘to witness the ruin of a city’ that had in the past been a source of opposition. However, while conceding that ‘heavily populated cities have had their drawbacks and the very one in question was a ghastly case in point’, he grudgingly concluded that the destruction of such an asset could not, on balance, be considered advantageous.
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The Affair of the Poisons would provide the King with fresh evidence of the unruly spirit of Paris, for it showed that the city possessed a subversive subculture entirely independent of royal control. This only intensified the King’s feelings of alienation and mistrust.

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According to the Savoyard ambassador, the King had always believed there was a real possibility that he might meet a violent end and this nervousness was reflected in the strict security precautions which surrounded him at all times. The elaborate ritual that governed the serving of the King’s food was partly designed to protect him from poisoners. When the King ate his midday meal, a table was set up near his own where the food was tasted before being offered to him. His Maître d’hôtel and
écuyer
also rubbed small pieces of bread on his napkin, plates and cutlery (not forgetting the royal toothpick), and then ate the bread to see if it had been contaminated by poison.
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When the King went hunting strict measures were employed to stave off assassination attempts. Several of the royal hunting forests were surrounded by walls and had guards posted at every gate. When the King wanted to use other areas of woodland for sporting pursuits, the local inhabitants were often denied access. The Marquis de Sourches suspected that such precautions were excessive, and that the King’s guards deliberately misrepresented the dangers that threatened him in order to heighten Louis’s dependence on them and to advance their own careers. Primi Visconti took the same view, complaining that the King’s Captain of the Guard, the Duc de Noailles, kept his master in a state of perpetual agitation by claiming that ‘he saw sinister figures everywhere’. Far from condemning Noailles as an alarmist, the King was annoyed that his other Captain of the Guard, the Duc de Rochefort, had a much more relaxed attitude. He upbraided Rochefort and was not reassured when the latter cheerfully replied, ‘Fear not, Sire! Your subjects are good. The wicked ones are those who give you bad ideas.’ When the Duc de Noailles’s son succeeded his father as Captain of the Guard, he too believed that the dangers facing the King should not be exaggerated, telling Louis that it merely gave rise to the unfortunate impression that he was highly vulnerable. To this the King retorted frostily, ‘Such should be the belief of those who guard me.’
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