The Kings' Mistresses Read Online Free Page A

characteristic curiosity, remarking on the styles of dress of the Roman women and the particular protocols surrounding any interaction with the pope and his relatives. Letters from the Italian abbé Elpidio Benedetti, formerly an agent of Cardinal Mazarin and whom Louis XIV had engaged to report on Marie’s trip to Rome and her reception there, describe the lavish entertainments designed to amuse her because, he wrote, “we were trying to make Madame forget the gallant fetes at Fontainebleau and the pleasures of her beloved country.” 3 As she recovered, she soon appreciated the efforts her husband was making to ease her entry into Roman society:
    After a few days, when my health was a bit restored despite the meager diet I had kept, I began to go out on promenades and anywhere
else where there was some entertainment. I went there in proper dress, that is dressed in the Italian style, having wanted to adopt that fashion because of its novelty for me. . . . Although the customs of Italy scarcely agreed with my temperament, the liking that I was beginning to feel for the constable made them easier for me to bear, for indeed, he did everything he could to please me in any way. 4
    Lorenzo Colonna was extremely pleased with his young wife. She was a showpiece for him, a new and exotic conquest, very gratifying for a man famous for the obsessive pride with which he held his family name. Visitors who came to the palazzo to call on the new Constabless Colonna were also expected to make obsequious demonstrations of loyalty and respect to the family patriarch. Lorenzo was known for insisting on such displays. Just before Marie’s voyage to Rome he had challenged a minor nobleman to a duel for not having addressed him as “your excellency.” Marie represented, too, a strengthening of Colonna’s links to the French throne. Once she had arrived safely, Colonna wrote to Louis XIV, taking care to express his generous feelings toward the king’s past “friendship” with Marie. Louis made a polite response, addressing Lorenzo as his “cousin” (Louis had often referred to Mazarin as his uncle), and expressing his own good wishes for the couple. It was a message in which much was left unsaid but also much was understood, in which Marie’s recovering body seemed to have become the sign of a strengthened tie that would hold the two men together in the future.
    FONTAINEBLEAU, 6 AUGUST 1661
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    Cousin, after the trials of a great journey and a dangerous illness, it is no small thing that my cousin, your wife, is finally arrived in Rome and convalescing. I was very pleased to learn this good news in your letter and hope that rest and the satisfaction of being with you will
soon bring her back to perfect health, I wish it with all my heart. I also saw with great pleasure the feelings that you tell me she still has for me, and your own sharing of those feelings. Be assured that mine will also always be as you desire for you and for her, and that I will joyfully embrace all occasions to prove this to you with my actions. 5
    Immediately upon their arrival in Rome, Lorenzo made it clear that he would not keep his new wife, or his own admiration for her, to himself. Proud of his family status and eager to display his wealth and power, he reveled in the public celebrations that normally accompanied the marriage of a great nobleman. He delighted, too, in impressing his French wife with the grandeur of her new residence, which in fact was unmatched by any private residence of the time in Paris, save perhaps the Mazarin palace. And he wanted to impress Marie, familiar with the court spectacles of Fontainebleau and the Louvre, with the wonders that could be orchestrated in the grand squares of Rome. As a surprise for her and a public display for the Romans, he commissioned Bernini to design an elaborate nighttime seascape in the Piazza Navona, which was flooded so that pleasure boats could float across