Naughty Paris

The French seem to have more of an affinity for Les Maitresses, or mistresses, than their Anglophone counterparts. Who knows if they actually "cheat" more than Americans or Brits, but they certainly love talking about it. Novels, movies, television shows -- it's all about his "cinq à sept" (more on the vocabulary in a future post) and her "amant". Ah, oui! Les femmes too! The battle of the sexes is fought on different grounds here in France, home of égalité.

Not that every French person will openly say they have (or are) a mistress, but it's seen more as if it's a fact of life than a moral issue. After all, mistresses are nothing new. One of the best-known in French history is Madame de Montespan, mistress of the one and only Sun King, Louis XIV. And lucky for us, she had enough free time to write, in her own words, a memoir on what it was like living the charmed life in the Palais de Versailles at the height of the French monarchy.

In the prologue by the English translator:

The cynical Court lady, whose beauty bewitched a great King, and whose ruthless sarcasm made Duchesses quail, is here drawn for us in vivid fashion by her own hand, and while concerned with depicting other figures she really portrays her own. Certainly, in these Memoirs she is generally content to keep herself in the background, while giving us a faithful picture of the brilliant Court at which she was for long the most lustrous ornament.
It is only by stray touches, a casual remark, a chance phrase, that we, as it were, gauge her temperament in all its wiliness, its egoism, its love of supremacy, and its shallow worldly wisdom. Yet it could have been no ordinary woman that held the handsome Louis so long her captive. The fair Marquise was more than a mere leader of wit and fashion. If she set the mode in the shape of a petticoat, or devised the sumptuous splendours of a garden fete, her talent was not merely devoted to things frivolous and trivial. She had the proverbial 'esprit des Mortemart'. Armed with beauty and sarcasm, she won a leading place for herself at Court, and held it in the teeth of all detractors.