LA VALLIÈRE
(Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess of)
(Tours, 1644 - Paris, 1710.) First official favorite of Louis XIV. Maid of honor to Henriette of England, sister-in-law of Louis XIV, seduced by the king, she quickly became his mistress thanks to the complicity of the Count of Saint-Aignan (1661).
Blonde, pretty, although slightly lame, she has above all very beautiful eyes which give her a delicious charm. Immediately, she loves the king with passion and without any personal ambition. During her first pregnancy, the king offered her a house near the Palais-Royal, the Hôtel de Brion, on the very spot where the Comédie-Française stands today. She will have four children from him but, of their love, only Marie-Anne de Bourbon (Mademoiselle de Blois, future Princess of Conti) and the Duc de Vermandois, Admiral of France at two years old, will survive, and who was to die on reaching his sixteenth birthday. year. In 1667, Louis XIV raised his mistress to the rank of Duchess of Saint-Christophe and Vaujours, and his daughter was legitimized. It is a break-up gift.
A few days later, the king takes on a new mistress, Madame de Montespan; but he intends that Louise de la Vallière remains at Court to hide, this time, the scandal of her new adulterous affair. No longer able to bear grief and humiliation, Louise ran to take refuge in the convent of Chaillot (1671).- Implacable, the king sent Colbert to order him to return to Versailles. Louise manages to endure for three years the mortifying treatment she must undergo daily in front of the Court, which observes her without pity. But, in 1674, she found a new refuge in the Carmel of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, where she retired definitively. She will live there for thirty-six years.
Youth and first cases with the law Legitimate daughter born between 1602 or 1603 in Boëge, Michée Chauderon has lived in the Republic of Geneva since 1620. Single, she works as a servant. She is also a healer, both known and feared, because she has the recipe for a soup that purifies embodied evil