Le Grand Siecle

THE SPLENDID CENTURY (306 pp.)--W. H. Lewis--Sloane ($5).

Little Louis Dieudonne de Bourbon, at the age of six, was taught an amusing game. Every morning, on awakening, he was to tell himself he was about to act God: every night, on going to bed, he was to ask himself how close he had come to the Original. Little Louis liked the game so much that as King Louis XIV of France (which he became at the age of four), he played it for keeps. He had been named Dieudonne--God-given--and believed it. In The Splendid Century, British Author W. H. Lewis shows that despite the King's intimate relationship with the Almighty, he was all too human, and that for all its splendor, Louis le Grand's grand siecle was not as splendid as it seemed. Author Lewis is an urbane scholar who knows how to squeeze the juice from the fruit of his research. He has turned out a series of lively sketches of 17th century France and managed to give an intimate sense of the period and its ruler.

Democratic King. Louis was 18 when Madame de Beauvais. one of his mother's ladies in waiting, waylaid him as he was coming from his bath, and seduced him. After that, Louis was insatiable. According to his sister-in-law, "all women, peasants, chambermaids, servants' daughters, women of quality" had only to pretend they loved him to be received in the royal bed. His Queen. Marie Therese, had to compete with a succession of mistresses and hordes of passing amourettes until she died. Six months later. Louis' mistress, Madame de Maintenon. became his wife and, at 46. the King suddenly closed the door on his boudoir career.

But the door to his court remained wide open. Since Louis insisted that his noblemen live there, housing was a nightmare. With 10.000 people living in the chateau at Versailles, it was as crowded as a slum. The bearer of many a celebrated name had to be content with a dismal attic room, though it seemed to be worth it to bask in the rays of the Sun King: the nobleman of the day counted himself lucky if he could become the official custodian of the royal chamber pot.

Louis was lavish and was served by 500 attendants, whom he boarded and housed. The money, of course, came from the people. Versailles' cost swallowed three out of every five francs collected in taxes, and nobody will ever know the price of building it. When Frangois Mansard, the King's architect, appeared with his bill, it was a shock even to openhanded Louis. He blanched, and burned the evidence.

For what he paid he was repaid in splendor, but not in comfort. Even his wife's room was icy in winter, broiling in summer, and the King would not allow her to put a shutter on her window "because it would mar the external symmetry of the iac,ade."

Paris, Beautiful Paris. For all its sumptuousness and its galaxy of the first names of France, the chateau was a bore with bowing courtiers incapable of scraping up an amusing conversation. As everyone knew, life in the provinces was dreary too, and anyone who lived there was considered a mere "vegetable with powers of locomotion." Some noblemen of wit and wealth defied the King's pique and choseParis. It was a dirty city. The streets were choked with mud and refuse, and the stench could be smelled two miles outside the city gates. Here, a nobleman lived on a grand scale. A bachelor might have "37 servants, of whom five are the personal attendants of the five senior servants." A childless couple might manage with 65 or so servants, but would require several more if there were children. The nobles, to the extent of their means, aped the King's style of living, and the bourgeois aped and sometimes outdid the nobles.

It was a century of fascinating contrasts. Literature nourished. Corneille, Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine turned out their masterpieces; Pascal wrote his Pensees, Descartes his Discourse on Method. Medicine, meanwhile, was in a parlous state. In one year, Louis XIII was bled 47 times, got 212 enemas. Louis XIV got the same kind of treatment, but, despite everything his physicians did, he survived for 77 years. By that time, he had done his full part to prepare the deluge.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.