The Kings' Mistresses by Elizabeth Goldsmith Page A

friendship withstood these rough years. They saw each other almost daily, and wrote letters when they were apart. He sent her his favorite books and they continued to discuss the ones they both enjoyed— Don Quixote, and historical tales of the loves of Henry IV—and he persisted in his affectionate mockery of her stubborn fondness for pastoral romance. She became annoyed with him for producing verse praising only the English victories in the war, and he replied that the French victories did not inspire him.
    When the French won the battle of Namur, Saint-Evremond stubbornly refused to share in Hortense’s satisfaction. Hortense’s daughter Marie-Olympe had a husband fighting with the French. In August 1692 he was killed in the battle of Steenkerque. Hortense was corresponding with her London friends from Bath, where she was taking the waters to try to heal a leg injury from a fall. Saint-Evremond wrote to her that her salon habitués all had come together to bemoan the sad military news, and then finished by drinking cheerfully to her health: “We drank to your health thrice: we started with approval, from approval we went to praise, and from praise to admiration. As tenderness and pity are normally mixed with praise, while drinking we regretted the misfortune of your condition, and I had difficulty stopping all the murmuring against Providence for having made the daughter a widow, instead of the mother.” 1 And so it went—the circle of friends sought above all to keep their pleasures alive during the difficult war years.
    Political positions were hardening on both sides. In his advanced age, Louis XIV was increasingly intolerant of religious practices that were not Catholic. After he revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, thousands of Protestants had fled the country, causing France to lose precious resources and a significant portion of its educated population. In England, William of Orange, after the death of his
wife, Mary, in 1694, embraced a harder line in favor of the Protestants, as he strove to strengthen his hold over Parliament. When the Nine Years’ War ended with the Treaty of Rijswijk in 1697, the English had won important concessions from Louis XIV, including his recognition of William as king, but it was a fragile peace, not destined to last for long.
    Although the Duchess Mazarin watched her own financial and political support weaken, she nonetheless had the pleasure of realizing that her public image as both wronged wife and female libertine continued to fascinate. Although moralistic condemnation of the lifestyle she had embraced continued and even increased, the cause of unhappily married women, which she had come to symbolize, was aired more openly in the 1690s than ever before. Several prominent women brought divorce cases before the House of Lords, and forced or unhappy marriages were discussed and acted out on the stage in plays by female playwrights. Even writers who took a more conservative view of marriage, such as the philosopher Mary Astell, who lived down the street from Hortense in Chelsea, acknowledged that the Mazarin case illustrated circumstances that no wife should have to endure.
    Marie had managed to remain informed of Hortense’s life through the years, sometimes sporadically, but she knew her sister’s fortunes were in decline. In a letter to Countess Ortensia Stella, she conveyed her sister’s good wishes and reported on her difficult situation:
    Madame de Mazarin asks me especially for news of you and tells me that she still has a great fondness for you. Since she thinks I am in Rome, she asks me to pay my compliments to Cardinal Guici and assure him that she will never forget her obligation to him. Please have someone tell him that. It is she who has been in a very bad state for some time, she has no pension, and no help coming from any side. It is only gambling that sustains her. 2

    A series of letters by Saint-Evremond to the Duchess