The Kings' Mistresses (27 page)

Such declarations did not bode well for a reconciliation. But the duke remained convinced that the time was right for a definitive legal confrontation that would force his wife to return to him. France and England were at war, and the French Catholic community in London was increasingly vulnerable. The religious basis of the conflict gave more zeal to the duke's determination to extricate his wife from England. He hoped for the support of the French king in his efforts, but he was aware that the general feeling at court was that Hortense should return to France without being required to return to him. Most people regarded the duke as eccentric and fanatical, if not mad. After a chance encounter with him when she was traveling near his country estate in Brittany, Madame de Sévigné had written to her daughter: “I cannot describe to you how extravagant the man is, he is mad, he dresses like a pauper. . . . We tried to persuade him that he should get his wife out of England . . . but he keeps repeating that she has to return to him. To him! Good God. Saint-Evremond is right when he says that she should be excused from the usual rules, one has only to look at Monsieur Mazarin to see why.”
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If the opinion of the refined public was
against him, the legal system, the duke felt, might not be so sympathetic to his wife. Throughout the 1680s he increasingly had been resorting to the courts to resolve the many quarrels and conflicts that plagued his tormented life. Even his own grown children, exasperated by the disarray of their father's financial affairs and his propensity for giving away vast sums to religious extremists and monastic orders, had entered into litigation against him.

The duke's next move was to engage the services of Claude Erard, a Parisian lawyer famous for his successful suits against aristocratic women by using sensational attacks on their reputations. Although divorce would not be legalized in France until the Revolution one hundred years later, a married couple could receive a legally authorized separation (sometimes called a “divorce”) that determined the division of common property. But the guidelines for such agreements were extremely variable depending on the magistrate or legal court conducting the review and the persuasiveness of arguments lawyers prepared. Lawyers presented their arguments to the presiding magistrate in writing, and because some of their briefs were also printed for public distribution in pamphlet form, lawyers became known for their rhetorical skills. Erard excelled at this. For the Mazarin case he also published his arguments as a pamphlet or “factum” that was widely circulated and immediately translated for broader distribution in England. His presentation decried every decision the Duchess Mazarin had made over the two decades since she had left her husband. He held her up as a bad example to all women, a libertine and a gambler, a woman who kept the company of vagrants, foreigners, and traitors to their country and religion. The salon that was so admired by visitors to London became a den of iniquity in Erard's description: “Madame de Mazarin made of her home a public bureau of gambling, pleasures, and gallantries, a new Babylon where people of all nations, all sects, speaking all sorts of languages, marched in confusion under the banner of fortune and sensual delight.”
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A principal counterargument presented by Hortense's lawyer, Sachot, was that his client was legally entitled to recover her dowry because she was under the protection of a kinswoman. Legal tradition (Roman law) dictated that women who left their husbands without permission risked losing their dowry, unless they took up residence with another member of the family. Erard ridiculed Sachot's claim, insisting that the intention of the law was that a wayward wife reform her behavior under the supervision of a relative:

The eloquent Erard pursued his points relentlessly and at length, clearly basking in the favorable position in which his client now
found himself. With Mary Beatrice of Modena now in France, and England engaged in a religious war against France, it was not difficult to insinuate that Hortense's continuous absence was tantamount to treason, even heresy: “Is the Prince of Orange her relative? All those gamblers, those libertines, those Presbyterians, those Episcopalians, those Quakers; in a word, those people of all religions except the true one, who fill her house, are they her relatives? Let her explain these relations of which we are ignorant. But there are none, it is only the love of independence that keeps her in that country.”
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It did not take long for the Grand Council to find in favor of the duke. Hortense's lawyer was forced to present arguments extending beyond those based on legal precedent or custom, which meant that Hortense lost the legal battle but won the sympathies of many. The discussion turned to popular opinion: What were the limits of a woman's obligation to a deranged husband? When should a feuding couple be encouraged to divorce? Did a woman not have an absolute right to control her own dowry? Readers of the pamphlets on both sides of the English Channel, already familiar with Hortense's story, were drawn into this case, which now became an occasion for public debate about a woman's right to independence from an unhappy marriage. Sachot evoked the duke's intolerance, his disturbed behavior, his destruction of the property of Cardinal Mazarin. Saint-Evremond seized the occasion to produce his own
Factum for the Duchess Mazarin Against Monsieur the Duke Mazarin Her Husband,
in which he decried the “injuries and calumnies” aimed at Hortense “and the English nation” by her husband's lawyer. He retold the story of Hortense's life beginning with her uncle's misguided choice of a husband. He itemized the dissipation of the cardinal's wealth in the hands of a crazed man “who always had the devil present in his dark imagination.” And he argued for the “natural” right to divorce a spouse who is clearly insane:

Factum and counterfactum centered on the Mazarin case would prolong the public debate over legal separation and divorce for decades to come. This case for legal separation became the first of its kind to be aired in the international media, and it generated published treatises and arguments about the legal rights of women in marriage. In her famous response to John Locke's theory of natural law, the feminist philosopher Mary Astell composed the essay “On Marriage” and opened it with the story of the Duchess Mazarin. In Paris, the playwright Jean Regnard produced a play called
The Divorce,
in which he incorporated arguments from the trial.

The judgment in favor of Duke Mazarin was rendered on December 29, 1689. Hortense was ordered to return to France and take up residence temporarily in the convent of Sainte-Marie de Chaillot, then return to her husband. She was in a difficult position, with considerable debt. “I would rather die,” she wrote to her sister Marianne, “than return to M. Mazarin, and I would have almost as much aversion to spending the rest of my days in a convent.”
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She was offered the option of joining Mary Beatrice of Modena in her residence in exile at Saint-Germain, but the prospect of living so close to Paris and a legally fortified Armand-Charles made Hortense nervous. Saint-Evremond argued vigorously against it. And though she was burdened by debt and uncertain of her future in London, she did have a strong coterie of friends
there. Saint-Evremond and others were willing to loan her considerable sums of money.

In letters written to friends and family in France, Hortense eloquently pleaded her own case (some thought her letters bore Saint-Evremond's mark). “I stayed longer than I should have and as long as I could with a husband who was so opposed to me; in the end I left for good reason a man who I had been attached to out of obedience. My just disengagement cost me the wealth that the world heard so much about, but liberty is never too dear for those who deliver themselves from tyranny.”
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She pointed out that even were she to return to France, she could not do so legally without first settling her debts in England. She wrote Marianne, her brother, Philippe, and Philippe's wife asking that they attempt to persuade the duke to help settle her debts, but Mazarin's response was clear: he was interested in only one outcome of the legal case. He wrote to Marianne:

None of the efforts of the many parties involved in this legal battle led to a significant change in the couple's ongoing estrangement. The duke had won his case, but he could not forcibly bring his wife to Paris. The duchess failed to retrieve some of her lost wealth, but her friends continued to provide her with financial support, and she refused to return to France. After James II invaded England from France in a failed attempt to recover his throne, the
war between the two countries expanded, postal connections were broken, and communication was difficult. Hortense held on to her life as best she could, moving to a smaller home in Kensington in 1692 and an even smaller one in Chelsea in 1694. All the while she continued to host her famous social gatherings, attract a steady stream of visitors, and give her favorite pleasure, the gambling game of basset, her increasingly obsessive attention.

Hortense had managed to remain in contact with Marie over the years since they had parted ways in Chambéry. In London, Hortense and Mary Beatrice had both been surprised to learn how much the English public already knew about the Mancini family, beginning with the sensation that had been caused by the story of Marie's tragic romance with Louis XIV. Hortense's memoirs, then the two versions of Marie's life story, were translated and published in England almost as soon as they were written. And as both sisters boldly tested the range of options available to them once they had made the decision not to return to their husbands, each was also aware of the moves that the other was making, and they consulted with each other. When Marie felt trapped in her Madrid convent, she proposed, on more than one occasion, that she be permitted to join Hortense in London, and when Hortense became depressed about her prospects in England she wrote to Marie that she was considering joining her in Madrid. Both of them eagerly received reports of the other from travelers to the courts of England and Spain, who brought news based on personal contact as well as what was available in the gazettes, always eager to print news of the fascinating sisters.

Unlike her sister, Marie had managed to orchestrate a reunion with her husband and children, which took place in July 1678, when the constable arrived in Madrid to officially accept his new appointment as Viceroy of Aragon. The two had not seen each other in more than six years, nor had Marie seen her sons, who by
now were twelve, fourteen, and fifteen years old. Lorenzo's traveling party also included Ortensia Stella, Marie's close friend and Lorenzo's mistress. If Hortense read the
Gazette of Madrid,
she certainly would have been surprised by its account of the couple's warm reunion. “The very day of his arrival,” the gazette reported, “Signor the Constable stopped at the convent of Santo Domingo el Real where Madama is living. They exchanged the most lively expressions of joy and tenderness, which lends more hope for their imminent reconciliation.”
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It was publicly understood that the two had reached an agreement whereby Marie would accompany her husband to Saragossa and there arrangements would be made for them to live in the same city, but separately. Another convent was acceptable to Marie, provided that she would not be cloistered. As expected, Lorenzo wrote to the pope formally requesting approval for the arrangement. But what was not known was that he had also written a letter to Cardinal Cibo in Rome asking him to ensure the refusal of his own request. By this duplicitous move he hoped to save face and be perceived as conciliatory, while also guaranteeing that he could force Marie back to Rome.