Athenais by Lisa Hilton

Author:Lisa Hilton [Hilton, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO022000
ISBN: 9780316030458
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2007-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“Jealousy feeds on doubts, and as soon

as doubt turns to certainty it becomes

a frenzy, or ceases to exist.”

In 1667, soon after their love affair had begun, Athénaïs and Louis, got up as shepherd and shepherdess, had performed together in the Ballet des Muses. Flanking them on the stage had been Madame Henriette and Louise de La Vallière, while the Queen, as ever, watched from the sidelines. So many disguises, opening like Chinese boxes to reveal even as they concealed. Louis the man who played Louis the King dancing as Louis the shepherd, with Louise, the official mistress, who had once been the screen for the King’s infatuation with his sister-in-law and now diverted attention from his new love, who still appeared, in Marie-Thérèse’s eyes at least, as her demure lady-in-waiting. As Athénaïs attained the height of her success in the 1670s, it would seem that such disguises had been thrown off, but it was her ability to negotiate the symbolic theatricality of court culture which contributed to that success, to her establishment as “the Real Queen of France.”

One reason why it is so difficult to penetrate the true character of Louis XIV is that his life was entirely given over to the enactment of his persona as King. Very rarely did any public gesture distinguish his person from that function, or the function from the person, since even the most mundane gesture was formalized into a symbolic royal ritual. True, the awkwardness that had been remarked upon before the beginning of his affair with Athénaïs had suggested that as a young man Louis had been uneasy in his role, but it becomes increasingly problematic to differentiate between his public and private personae, or even to claim that such a distinction existed. Primi Visconti observed several times that if Louis was in company and the door opened, he would compose his features differently “as if he had to appear on a stage. Altogether, he knew well how to play the King in everything.” No understanding of Louis’s relationship with Athénaïs is complete, then, if his lack of a “real Queen,” a consort who was capable of fulfilling an equivalent symbolic function, is not taken into account. Early in the 1660s, Louis’s attraction to his brother’s wife, Henriette, could be explained as much by this unfilled role as by her own personal charms. On one occasion, in 1661, Henriette had even substituted for the Queen in one of the most spiritually resonant of royal roles: the washing of the feet of twelve paupers on Maundy Thursday. This humble ritual, which imitated Christ washing the feet of His disciples, and which was simultaneously enacted by priests and bishops all over France, confirmed the divine aspect of the monarch that formed the sacred justification for his temporal power.

It was an embarrassment to Louis that Marie-Thérèse had failed to do her duty at the church of St. Denis, and her inability to “perform” as Queen continued to humiliate him, though he was too dignified to reveal this in his behavior towards her.

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