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breaking with them if they so much as mentioned it". The two statements are not incompatible, as
Bontemps was in a position to ask favours from ministers and other powerbrokers. He says Bontemps was "rough and brusque in manner, yet respectful and always in his place.... His only skill lay in serving his master, and he was wholly intent on that... influential for the past fifty years, and with the Court at his feet." He once greatly amused Louis, when asked how his wife was, by "replying mechanically with a shrug".
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anecdotes have him arranging the marriage to an obscure country nobleman of an illegitimate daughter of Louis who, unlike many, he did not choose to acknowledge officially, and, in Louis's earlier years, leading a minor mistress enveloped in a cloak up the back stairs to the King's study for her assignation; the king having put the key on the outside of the door.
172:, always great nobles, against the more menial aspects of the role. Once established, the valets expanded in number and importance, somewhat at the Gentlemen's expense. One of their number was always a few steps from the King wherever he went, and the four Premiers, rotating quarterly, were alone able to, and presumably did, sleep at the foot of the royal bed.
102:. He was thus a key figure in maintaining the security of the King, and managing his household. The Governorships of Versailles and Marly had been given to him in 1665 after the death of Jérôme Blouin (1610-1665), then the senior head-valet, and passed to Blouin's son in turn when Bontemps died. He was also a member of the
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speaks of "royal coaches (the kind without armorial bearings on the harness, such as
Bontemps used for the King's private missions)" and says that "all the secret orders, the private audiences, the sealed letters to and from the King, in fact all the mysteries passed through his hands". Saint-Simon
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wrote that part of his success with Louis came from never asking him for favours, although Saint-Simon says that he "loved procuring favours solely for the pleasure of it ... great numbers of people, some of them highly placed, owed their fortunes to him, and he was modest almost to the point of
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He seems to have been an amiable figure, entirely devoted to Louis, who in turn trusted him as he did few others. He was twelve years older than the King. He was one of a small handful of witnesses to the secret second marriage of Louis to
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before becoming a
Premier Valet in 1643. Alexandre succeeded him on his death in 1659, dying in office in 1701, by which time he was a count and marquis, holding several key offices controlling both the palaces and towns of
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in the centre of Paris, with thirty rooms and a staff of twelve. According to Saint-Simon, he copied his master with a secret second marriage to the mother of La Roche, head-valet to Louis's grandson,
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He emerges better than most from the
Memoirs of Saint-Simon, whose father had been a friend of Bontemps. Saint-Simon asked him for advice on important issues, using him sparingly. The memoirist
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and
Premier valet did the work, whilst the First Gentleman of the bedchamber (rotating annually among the four holders) had "the command of the room" (
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51:, respected and feared for his exceptional access to the King. He was the second of a sequence of five Bontemps to hold the position of
227:. The children of his first marriage married very well, and two generations later a Bontemps married an illegitimate son of the last
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Apart from a large apartment in the palace, and a separate house in
Versailles, Bontemps had a "hôtel particulier" (townhouse) on the
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or
Governor of Versailles, his control extended to the whole town outside the palaces, where many courtiers had houses.
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of the ceremony, attended daily by about a hundred of the greatest courtiers – a significant point of prestige.
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The office of head valet dated back to a historically unwise complaint some generations back by the
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He used the Swiss Guards stationed around the
Palaces and gardens to report on the behaviour of
289:, where the player takes the part of a junior valet helping him to thwart a plot at Versailles.
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opposite, from where he watched the ensuing frustrations SS Memoirs:III;463-4
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This article is partly sourced from the French
Knowledge article "Bontemps".
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A Lust for Virtue: Louis XIV's Attack on Sin in
Seventeenth-Century France
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His father, Jean Baptiste Bontemps (1590–1659), had been surgeon to
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who guarded the King and his palaces, and the household of the
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Choisy Memoirs, pp183-4, quoted Riley, op & page cit
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Bontemps is a leading character in the computer game
504:"Versailles 1685 Review - Mr. Bill's Adventureland"
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558:Historical Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon
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