A MISTRESS OF INTRIGUE
"On 11th September," Madame de Motteville says, "we saw arrive from
Italy three nieces of Cardinal Mazarin and a nephew. Two Mancini sisters
and the nephew were the children of the youngest sister of his Eminence;
and of the sisters Laure, the elder, was a pleasing brunette with a
handsome face, about twelve or thirteen years of age; the second
(Olympe), also a brunette, had a long face and pointed chin. Her eyes
were small, but lively; and it might be expected that, when fifteen
years of age, she would have some charm. According to the rules of
beauty, it was impossible to grant her any, save that of having dimples
in her cheeks."
Such, at the age of nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of
her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King
in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she
incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in
obscurity, shunned by all who had known her in her day of splendour.
It was a singular freak of fortune which translated the Mancini girls
from their modest home in Italy to the magnificence of the French
Court, as the adopted children of their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, the
virtual ruler of France, and the avowed lover (if not, as some say, the
husband) of Anne of Austria, the Queen-mother. "See those little girls,"
said the wife of Maréchal de Villeroi to Gaston d'Orléans, pointing to
the Mancini children, the centre of an admiring crowd of courtiers.
"They are not rich now; but some day they will have fine châteaux, large
incomes, splendid jewels, beautiful silver, and perhaps great
dignities."
And how true this prophecy proved, we know; for, of the Cardinal's five
Mancini nieces (for three others came, later, as their uncle's
protégées), Laure found a husband in the Duc de Mercoeur, grandson of
Henri IV.; two others lived to wear the coronet of Duchess; Olympe, as
we shall see, became Comtesse de Soissons; and Marie, after narrowly
missing the Queendom of France, became the wife of the Constable
Colonna, one of the greatest nobles of Italy.
Nor is there anything in such high alliances to cause surprise; for
their future was in the hands of the most powerful, ambitious, and
wealthy man in France. From their first appearance as his guests they
were received with open arms by Louis' Court. They were speedily
transferred to the Palais Royal, to be brought up with the boy-King,
Louis XIV., and his brother, the Prince of Anjou; while the Queen
herself not only paid them the most flattering attentions and treated
them as her own children, but herself undertook part of their education.
It was under such enviable conditions that the young daughters of a
poor Roman baron grew up to girlhood--the pets of the Queen and the
Court, the playfellows of the King, and the acknowledged heiresses of
their uncle's millions; and of them all, not one had a keener eye to the
future than Olympe of the long face, pointed chin, and dimples. It was
she who entered with the greatest zest into the romps and games of her
playmate, Louis XIV., who surrounded him with the most delicate
flatteries and attentions, and practised all her childish arts and
coquetries to win his favour. And she succeeded to such an extent that
it was always the company of Olympe, and not of her more beautiful
sisters, Hortense, Laure, or Marie, that Louis most sought.
Not that Olympe was always to remain the plain, unattractive child
Madame de Motteville describes in 1647. Each year, as it passed, added
some touch of beauty, developed some latent charm, until at eighteen she
was very fair to look upon. "Her eyes now" says Madame de Motteville,
"were full of fire, her complexion had become beautiful, her face less
thin, her cheeks took dimples which gave her a fresh charm, and she had
fine arms and beautiful hands. She certainly seemed charming in the eyes
of the King, and sufficiently pretty to indifferent spectators."
That she had wooers in plenty, even before she was so far advanced in
the teens, was inevitable; but her personal preferences counted for
little in face of the Cardinal's determination to find for her, as for
all his nieces, a splendid alliance which should shed lustre on himself.
And thus it was that, without any consultation of her heart, Olympe's
hand was formally given to Prince Eugene de Savoie, Comte de Soissons, a
man in whose veins flowed the Royal strains of Savoy and France.
It was a brilliant match indeed for the daughter of a petty Italian
baron; and Mazarin saw that it was celebrated with becoming
magnificence. On the 20th February, 1657, we see a brilliant company
repairing to the Queen's apartments, "the Comte de Soissons escorting
his betrothed, dressed in a gown of silver cloth, with a bouquet of
pearls on her head, valued at more than 50,000 livres, and so many
jewels that their splendour, joined to the natural éclat of her beauty,
caused her to be admired by everyone. Immediately afterwards, the
nuptials were celebrated in the Queen's chapel. Then the illustrious
pair, after dining with the Princesse de Carignan-Savoie, ascended to
the apartments of his Eminence, the Cardinal, where they were
entertained to a magnificent supper, at which the King and Monsieur did
the company the honour of joining them."
Then followed two days of regal receptions; a visit to Notre Dame to
hear Mass, with the Queen herself as escort; and a stately journey to
the Hôtel de Soissons, where the Comtesse's mother-in-law "testified to
her, by her joy and the rich presents which she made her, how great was
the satisfaction with which she regarded this marriage."
Thus raised to the rank of a Princess of the Blood, Olympe was by no
means the proud and happy woman she ought to have been. She had, in
fact, aspired much higher; she had had dreams of sharing the throne of
France with her handsome young playmate, the King; and to Louis, wife
though she now was, she had lost none of the attraction she possessed
when he called her his "little sweetheart" in their childish games
together. "He continued to visit her with the greatest regularity," to
quote Mr Noel Williams; "indeed, scarcely a day went by on which His
Majesty's coach did not stop at the gate of the Hôtel de Soissons; and
Olympe, basking in the rays of the Royal favour, rapidly took her place
as the brilliant, intriguing great lady Nature intended her to be."
It is little wonder, perhaps, that Olympe's foolish head was turned by
such flattering attentions from her sovereign, or that she began to give
herself airs and to treat members of the Royal family with a haughty
patronage. Even La Grande Mademoiselle did not escape her insolence;
for, as she herself records, "when I paid her a thousand compliments and
told her that her marriage had given me the greatest joy and that I
hoped we should always be good friends, she answered me not a word."
But Olympe's supremacy was not to remain much longer unchallenged. The
King's vagrant fancy was already turning to her younger sister, Marie,
whose childish plainness had now ripened to a beauty more dazzling than
her own--the witchery of large and brilliant black eyes, a complexion of
pure olive, luxuriant, jet-black hair, a figure of singular suppleness
and grace, and a sprightliness of wit and a _gaieté de coeur_ which the
Comtesse could not hope to rival. It soon began to be rumoured in Court
that Louis spent hours daily in the company of Mazarin's beautiful
niece; a rumour which Hortense Mancini supports in her "Memoirs." "The
presence of the King, who seldom stirred from our lodging, often
interrupted us," she says; "my sister, Marie, alone was undisturbed; and
you can easily understand that his assiduity had charms for her, who was
the cause of it, because it had none for others."
And as Louis' visits to the Mancini lodging became more and more
frequent, each adding a fresh link to the chain that was binding him to
her young sister, Madame de Soissons saw less and less of him, until an
amused tolerance gave place to a genuine alarm. It was nothing less than
an outrage that she, who had so long held first place in the King's
favour, should be ousted by a "mere child," the last person in the world
whom she could have thought of as a rival. But the Comtesse was no woman
to be easily dethroned. Although at every Court ball, fête, or ballet,
Louis was now inseparable from her sister, she affected to ignore these
open slights and lost no opportunity in public of vaunting her intimacy
with His Majesty, even to the extent on one occasion, as Mademoiselle
records, of taking Louis' seat at a ball supper and compelling him to
share it with her.
But such shameless arrogance only served to estrange the King still
further, and to make him seek still more the company of the young
sister, who had already captured his heart as the Comtesse had never
captured it. When Louis made his memorable journey to Lyons to meet the
Princess Margaret of Savoy, it was to Marie that he paid the most
courtly and tender attentions. "During the journey," says Mademoiselle,
"he did not address a word to the Comtesse de Soissons"; and, indeed, on
more than one occasion he showed a marked aversion to her.
At St Jean d'Angely, Louis not only himself escorted Marie to her
lodging; he stayed with her until two o'clock in the morning. "Nothing,"
her sister Hortense records, "could equal the passion which the King
showed, and the tenderness with which he asked of Marie her pardon for
all she had suffered for his sake." It was, indeed, no secret at Court
that he had offered her marriage, and had taken a solemn vow that
neither Margaret of Savoy nor the Infanta of Spain should be his wife.
But, as we have seen in a previous chapter, both the Queen and Mazarin
were determined that the Infanta should be Queen of France; and that his
foolish romance with the Mancini girl should be nipped in the bud.
There was also another powerful influence at work to thwart his passion
for Marie. The indifference of the Comtesse de Soissons had given place
to a fury of resentment; and she needed no instigation of her uncle to
determine at any cost to recover the place she had lost in Louis'
favour. She brought all her armoury of coquetry and flatteries to bear
on him, and so far succeeded that, we read, "the King has resumed his
relations with the Comtesse; he has recommenced to talk and laugh with
her; and three days since he entertained M. and Madame de Soissons with
a ball and a play, and afterwards they partook of _medianoche_ (a
midnight banquet) together, passing more than three hours in
conversation with them."
Meanwhile Marie, realising the hopelessness of her passion in face of
the opposition of her uncle and the Queen, and of Louis' approaching
marriage to the Spanish Princess, had given him unequivocally to
understand that their relations must cease, and the rupture was complete
when the Comtesse told the King of her sister's dallying with Prince
Charles of Lorraine, of their assignations in the Tuileries, of their
mutual infatuation, and of the rumours of an arranged marriage. "_Cela
est bien_" was all Louis remarked, but the dark flush of anger that
flooded his face was a sweet reward to the Comtesse for her treachery.
A few days later her revenge was complete when, in the King's presence,
she rallied her sister on her low spirits. "You find the time pass
slowly when you are away from Paris," she said; "nor am I surprised,
since you have left your lover there"; to which Marie answered with a
haughty toss of the head, "That is possible, Madame."
One formidable rival thus removed from her path, Madame de Soissons was
not long left to enjoy her triumph; for another was quick to take the
place abandoned by the broken-hearted Marie--the beautiful and gentle La
Vallière, who was the next to acquire an ascendancy over the King's
susceptible heart. Once more the Comtesse, to her undisguised chagrin,
found herself relegated to the background, to look impotently on while
Louis made love to her successor, and to meditate new schemes of
vengeance. It was in vain that Louis, by way of amende, found for her a
lover in the Marquis de Vardes, the most handsome and dissolute of his
courtiers, for whom she soon developed a veritable passion. Her vanity
might be appeased, but her bitterness--the _spretoe injuria
formoe_--remained; and she lost no time in plotting further mischief.
With the help of M. de Vardes and the Comte de Guiche, she sent an
anonymous letter to the Queen, containing a full and intimate account of
her husband's amour with La Vallière--the letter enclosed in an envelope
addressed in the handwriting of the Queen of Spain. Fortunately for
Maria Theresa's peace of mind the letter fell into the hands of Louis
himself, who was naturally furious at such treachery and determined to
make those responsible for it suffer--when he should discover them. As,
however, the investigation of the matter was entrusted to de Vardes, it
is needless to say that the culprits escaped detection.
Madame de Soissons' next attempt to bring about a rupture between the
King and La Vallière, by bringing forward a rival in the person of the
seductive Mlle de la Motte-Houdancourt, proved equally futile, when
Louis discovered by accident that she was but a tool in Madame's
designing hands; and for a time the Comtesse was sent in disgrace from
the Court to nurse her jealousy and to devise more effectual plans of
vengeance.
What form these took seems clear from an investigation held at the
close of 1678 into a supposed plot to poison the King and the Dauphin--a
plot of which La Voisin, one of the greatest criminals in history, was
suspected of being the ringleader. During this inquiry La Voisin
confessed that the Comtesse de Soissons had come to her house one day
"and demanded the means of getting rid of Mile de la Vallière"; and,
further, that the Comtesse had avowed her intention to destroy not only
Louis' mistress, but the King himself.
Such a confession was well calculated to rouse a storm of indignation in
France, where Madame de Soissons had made many powerful enemies. The
Chambre unanimously demanded her arrest; but before it could be
effected, Madame, stoutly declaring her innocence, had shaken the dust
of Paris off her feet, and was on her way to Brussels.
During her flight to safety, we are told, "the principal inns in the
towns and villages through which she passed refused to receive her"; and
more than once she was compelled to sleep on straw and suffer the
insults of the populace, which reviled her as sorceress and poisoner.
"We are assured," Madame de Sevigné writes, "that the gates of Namur,
Antwerp, and other towns have been closed against the Countess, the
people crying out, 'We want no poisoner here'!" Even at Brussels,
whenever she ventured into the streets she was assailed by a storm of
insults; and on one occasion, when she entered a church, "a number of
people rushed out, collected all the black cats they could find, tied
their tails together, and brought them howling and spitting into the
porch, crying out that they were devils who were following the
Comtesse."
In the face of such chilling hospitality Madame de Soissons was not
tempted to make a long stay in Brussels; and after a few months of
restless wandering in Flanders and Germany, she drifted to Spain where
she succeeded in ingratiating herself with the Queen. She found little
welcome however from the King, who, as the French Ambassador to Madrid
wrote, "was warned against her. He accused her of sorcery, and I learn
that, some days ago, he conceived the idea that, had it not been for a
spell she had cast over him, he would have had children.... The life of
the Comtesse de Soissons consists in receiving at her house all persons
who desire to come there, from four o'clock in the evening up to two or
three hours after midnight. There is, sire, everything that can convey
an air of familiarity and contempt for the house of a woman of quality."
That Carlos' suspicions were not without reason was proved when one day
his Queen, after, it is said, drinking a glass of milk handed to her by
the Comtesse, was taken suddenly ill and expired after three days of
terrible suffering. That she died of poison, like her mother, the
ill-fated sister of our second Charles, seems probable; but that the
poison was administered by the Comtesse, whose friend and protectress
she was and who had every reason to wish her well, is less to be
believed, in spite of Saint-Simon's unequivocal accusation. Certainly
the crime was not proved against her; for we find her still in Spain in
the following spring, when Carlos, his patience exhausted, ordered her
to leave the country.
After a short stay in Portugal and Germany, Madame de Soissons was back
in Brussels, where she spent the brief remainder of her days--"all the
French of distinction who visited the City" (to quote Saint-Simon)
"being strictly forbidden to visit her." Here, on the 9th October, 1690,
her beauty but a memory, bankrupt in reputation, friendless and poor,
the curtain fell on the life so full of mis-used gifts and baffled
ambitions.