Parc aux Cerfs was a modest townhouse tucked in a green park at 4 Rue Saint-Médéric, in the Saint-Louis district of Versailles, just a kilometer from the palace. This unremarkable building, which may have been one of several nearby structures, became over the years a source of sensational rumors, gossip, and countless versions of what this place really was and what actually happened there.
King Louis XV married a devout woman named Marie Leszczińska (1703-1768) in September 1725, when he was just 15 years old. Marie was the daughter of the deposed king of Poland and six years older than the king. After more than ten pregnancies, the queen decided to close the door of her bedroom to him, and that’s how a chain of royal mistresses began, the most famous of whom was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764). They met at a masked ball, and she quickly became the maîtresse-en-titre (the king’s official mistress) and was given an apartment above the king’s private rooms at the Palace of Versailles.
Madame de Pompadour Goes From Mistress to Procuress
After about six years, their relationship became one of close friendship only, and the king stopped visiting Pompadour’s bed. Some claim this was due to a medical issue the marquise suffered after a miscarriage, while others say the two had simply grown tired of each other. From one mistress to the next, to keep her position and to cheer up the melancholy king, Pompadour decided to regularly supply him with young girls (sometimes as young as 14) to serve as his mistresses. The claim is that the king wanted young virgins out of fear of venereal disease, so the girls were not only very young but also came from respectable families, usually from the lower bourgeoisie.
To gather and select the girls, the marquise de Pompadour was assisted by Dominique Guillaume Lebel, the king’s head valet. After choosing a potential mistress, Lebel would invite the girl to dinner at Versailles. Meanwhile, the king would use a peephole in the wall to observe her without being seen. If he liked what he saw, he would summon her to his room, and if he was interested in her, she would become one of his mistresses. Pompadour shared the king’s fears, but venereal disease wasn’t her only worry. She was also concerned that one of the girls might get pregnant, and to deal with this problem she promised the girls that if they became pregnant, they would receive a dowry and be married off to distant relatives of the king.
Marie-Louise O’Murphy: the Mistress Who Nearly Toppled Madame de Pompadour
But Madame de Pompadour’s greatest fear was that someone younger and more beautiful than her would capture the king’s heart and take her place. That fear nearly came true in 1753, when the king fell for one of his young mistresses, Marie-Louise O’Murphy (1737-1814), the daughter of an Irish shoemaker. The courtiers called her “Morphise,” and she even posed as the model for several famous paintings by François Boucher. But the trouble for Pompadour didn’t end there: O’Murphy tried to take her place and oust her from her title as the king’s official mistress.
That was already too much for Pompadour, and when O’Murphy gave birth on June 20, 1754, to the king’s illegitimate daughter, Agathe-Louise de Saint-Antoine-de-Saint-André, Pompadour seized the opportunity to banish her from Versailles for good, sending her away in the dead of night without her daughter. A famous saying of Pompadour’s was, “Sympathy is wasted on those who are neither dying nor starving,” and O’Murphy learned too late that behind Pompadour’s pleasant and charming appearance was a woman of great power and influence who stopped at nothing to protect her position.
The Harem of Parc aux Cerfs
To prevent further rivalries and similar situations, Madame de Pompadour decided to act. She organized a steady stream of beautiful young women for the king’s bedroom, but these girls had no place at the palace, neither physically nor socially. So the king needed another place nearby to house them, and in 1755 he bought the building at 4 Rue Saint-Médéric, on what had once been the hunting grounds of Louis XIV, and turned it into the girls’ residence. Life was comfortable at Parc aux Cerfs. The place was carefully furnished and decorated, and a staff of servants attended to the girls’ every need. The king never visited his mistresses at Parc aux Cerfs himself; instead, he had them brought secretly to the palace and back. At least at first, no one knew what was going on.
Stories and gossip began to swirl around Parc aux Cerfs, and naturally it became the source of sensational rumors. Some claimed that thousands of girls passed through the small house and that wild orgies took place there. One account went so far as to write: “…several elegant houses … were used to house women … young girls were brought there, sold by their parents, and sometimes forced into it. They left the place loaded with gifts, but almost certainly never saw again the king who had displeased them…”. One Victorian-era writer claimed that the stories about Parc aux Cerfs were far from reality, and another account claimed that sometimes no resident lived there for six months straight. In any case, it’s estimated that between 30 and 50 girls passed through over the years.
The End of Parc aux Cerfs
Like all good things, Parc aux Cerfs came to an end, though not because the king grew old, nor because of the rumors that damaged his reputation, nor because of any wish on his part to live a more respectable life. It ended because of exactly what Madame de Pompadour had feared: that one of the girls would steal the king’s heart. Luckily for her, that happened only after her death. After Pompadour died, the king’s loneliness grew until one of the girls from the park captured his heart. In 1768, the king took Jeanne du Barry as his mistress. The beautiful young woman took up so much of the king’s attention that he lost interest in Parc aux Cerfs, which was left abandoned. So in 1771, after about 16 years of owning the place, the king decided to sell it.
Louis XV: Between Savior and Exploiter
Parc aux Cerfs remains a controversial place. There’s no doubt that by today’s standards, Louis XV would be considered a serial sexual predator who exploited innocent young girls to satisfy his dark desires. But at the time, this was not only accepted but was the aspiration of many girls, and even of their families, who saw it as a way to improve their social and financial standing. After the girls became pregnant or lost the king’s favor, they would receive a generous dowry and be married off to men of good lineage and reputation but little money, so both sides benefited: the husband brought his social standing, and the girl (who had lost her virginity and her good name) brought her money.
Those who defend the king argue that he was a man who enjoyed conversation and genuinely enjoyed the company of these young women, who were not merely objects of his desire. The mistress Marguerite-Catherine Haynault, for instance, charmed the king with her talent and even painted a portrait of him. It’s estimated that Louis XV fathered between 15 and 20 illegitimate children with his young mistresses, all of whom he supported financially. We will never truly know what happened there, but there’s no doubt that a place whose purpose was to house mistresses was bound to attract rumors and scandal. Louis XV was a notorious womanizer, but none of his escapades damaged his good name. His grandson, Louis Auguste, who succeeded him as Louis XVI, was the opposite of his grandfather and never kept a single mistress. In his case, it was his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, who attracted the sensational rumors, and people were far less forgiving of her.
Today, the building that once housed Parc aux Cerfs is used as a residential building in a nondescript neighborhood, and its appearance gives no hint of what went on there in the carefree days of Louis XV.
Did you enjoy this article? Feel free to read more articles by Ronen Sass on the palaces of France
- The Hidden Palace: A Journey Behind the Scenes of the Palace of Versailles
- Château de Champs-sur-Marne
- Château de la Motte-Tilly
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