Louis XIII, the Just

14. THE INTIMATE LOUIS

THE INTIMATE LOUIS Iiecdotal history has dismissed the aging Louis XIII as a fawning lover of brainless young men and a hopeless prude with women, unlikely the father of his own son. This biographer has even heard the spurious story that Mazarin sired the future Louis XIV whispered to him in the Bibliotheque nationale (though Mazarin was out of France both before and during the gestation period). Some writers have gone out of their way to give the paternity award to Buckingham , who died a decade earlier! To get to the truth, we must examine Louis's intimate life in its totality. As Louis passed from early adulthood to premature middle age, his relationships took on a set pattern. He continued to be obsessively drawn to both men and women, but now it was to younger not older persons. Luynes was followed by Barradat, Saint-Simon, and Cinq Mars. Mme de Luynes (now Mme de Chevreuse) was succeeded by Marie de Hautefort and Louise de La Fayette. Each of these young male and female flames conformed to one of two opposite types. The Louis the Just who was torn between punishing and pardoning subjects also alternated between petulantly demanding and gentle, understanding friends. To complicate matters, the king's relationships often overlapped—and they always paralleled his ritual of dutiful lovemaking with his estranged wife. The most dramatic sequence of these entanglements led directly to the conception of Louis's heir and successor which, to be sure, was no accident, though it has routinely been depicted that way. 273 14 A 274 The Legacy of Louis XIII The pattern of Louis's relationships with women began with Mme de Chevreuse, an early exemplar of the attractive, pleasure-loving, willful, and quarrelsome favorite-type that led Louis XIII time and again to distraction, love spats, and unhappiness. He never quite got her out of his life; long after his brief adolescent infatuation, the woman he sarcastically called "the Messiah" haunted him because of her close friendship with Queen Anne and her involvement in schemes running counter to King Louis's politics: the Chalais conspiracy , Chateauneuf's falling out with king and cardinal, and Lorraine 's hostility to France. Together with Queen Mother Marie de' Medici and Queen Anne of Austria, the duchess Marie de Chevreuse just about turned Louis XIII into a misogynist. But not quite. In the spring of 1630, the fourteen-year-old Marie de Hautefort caught his eye. She was a pink-cheeked, spirited innocent with blue eyes and golden hair in the queen mother's household . He was in need of distraction. The monarch fell in love instantly . Louis politely begged his mother's permission to visit the girl. He donned colorful clothes and forgot all about hunting. Yethe dared not touch her; there is even a story that one day he used a pair of silver tongs to snatch a gossipy note she and the queen had tauntingly hid in her stirring bosom. In spite of this reserve, he became insanely jealous at the attention other men paid her.1 No wonder that Tallemant des Reaux concluded that Louis XIII had nothing of the lover in him but jealousy.2 The obsession, seemingly broken in 1635 with Louis's sudden interest in Louise de La Fayette, resumed two years later, only to be terminated by Louis at the end of the decade. And as the relationship progressed, simple infatuation was darkened by lovers' quarrels. Louis had discovered someone well endowed to feed on his suspicious , judgmental nature. To make matters worse, the king had the bad sense to make the object of his desires lady-in-waiting to the queen. Anne and Hautefort found mutual comfort in giggling at the royal suitor's prudishness and smirking at his petty jealousy.This state of affairs continued right through the queen's first full-term pregnancy. To read Louis's letters to Richelieu about la creature is an eye opener: here was a powerful monarch helplessly baring his soul down to the last detail. Let us eavesdrop as the stormy entente neared its end. A convenient date is 27 November 1638. We find Louis fuming to Richelieu that "the creature is always in a foul mood," while gloating that an imminent victoryover the Habsburgs might hasten peace. By January The Intimate Louis 275 1639, the monarch was less pessimistic and more self-deprecating about his personal...