The Kings' Mistresses Read Online Free Page B

the square, perfectly outlined by grand building facades. On this night, their windows were hung with richly brocaded banners with the initials “MMC” embroidered in gold. Stepping into a boat decked with flowers, Marie was surrounded by musicians. The concert that followed was punctuated by fireworks that lit up the night sky. Benedetti wrote to Paris describing the event, adding that “she seems to take pleasure in [the fetes], but she says that to enjoy them she must forget what is in her heart! Her gracious manner leads her to courteously receive all of these diversions, but she is much more gay when she has received letters from France.” 6
    Lorenzo was not discouraged. He continued his lavish attentions to his new bride, attentions that were usually closely connected to
the ostentatious display of his own prestige. At the end of August he paraded Marie, seated in an elegant carriage, across the city accompanied by a cavalcade of twenty horsemen. On August 29 and again on September 13, he organized an evening concert and serenade for his wife, with more than thirty instruments playing in the courtyard of their palazzo.
    Later that year, in November 1661, Queen Marie-Thérèse of France gave birth to a son, and the Colonnas were among those invited to watch the lavish celebrations produced for the French community in Rome. Marie herself was acutely aware that she was expected to produce a strong Colonna succession, and she had rewarded the family’s hopes by becoming pregnant almost immediately but had miscarried in the second month, “which made people all over Rome say that the constable had married an incurable woman and that I would have greater need of doctors than of midwives.” 7 By the summer of 1662 she was pregnant again. This time her husband forbade her to ride on horseback, which he believed had precipitated the miscarriage. Marie reluctantly agreed to go about only by sedan chair or carriage.
    This did not mean, however, that she would agree to miss her favorite outings, which in those early years in Rome often meant going on a hunt for the boar and deer that proliferated in the countryside and were protected for the amusement of noble hunting parties. Opportunities for some of the diversions familiar to Parisians—theater, dance, music—were scarce under the rule of Pope Alexander VII, who was a lover of monumental art and architecture but had banned all public theater. On his desk he kept a marble skull, designed by Bernini, as a reminder of the inevitable futility of human endeavor. When Marie’s brother, Philippe, arrived in Rome, he was immediately treated to a hunting outing in the country with his new brother-in-law. Marie insisted on joining the party: “Even though my pregnancy did not permit me to ride
a horse, I still was able to enjoy all the entertainment, because the hunters make the hunt pass fairly often by some covered wagons of a sort which they make for such purposes. I was safe there, since even the most furious boars could not tip them over.” 8 As a girl in France, Marie, along with her sisters, had learned to ride. Though not as important for ladies as for gentlemen, equestrianism was part of a young noblewoman’s education, particularly in France, where girls learned to ride both sidesaddle and astride, and where the ladies often accompanied the men on hunting expeditions. Even sidesaddle, a good rider could keep up with the hunting party, thanks to the horned sidesaddle, designed by Catherine de Medici to permit the rider to lock her leg firmly around a saddle horn while still keeping both legs to one side. Marie was adept at riding both ways, and she loved the speed of the hunt. This was a pleasure that she shared with Lorenzo, himself a renowned equestrian who was proud of his stables and owned a large stud farm outside of Rome that he visited frequently. So he indulged his young wife’s passion for hunting, except during