Duchess of Chartres

The Duchess of Chartres is a young member of the royal family whose conduct repeatedly unsettles the decorum surrounding her title. Called Madame Lucifer by her husband, the Duke of Chartres, she smokes cigars with Mlle d’Armagnac, meets the King’s disapproving gaze without retreating, and makes no secret of her lack of interest in her husband. Her appearances place her at the crossing point of courtly ceremony and private desire: conspicuous in rank, yet unwilling to perform the obedient wife expected of her.

Identity and Courtly Position

The Duchess enters the narrative as a young duchess whose beauty and behavior attract attention. At a gathering where courtiers praise Yves de la Croix’s voyage, she watches him and flutters her fan, while Mlle d’Armagnac agrees with her admiration. Their gestures unfold beside a pointed contrast: the Duchess and her husband exchange neither words nor glances, while Mlle d’Armagnac directs her own attention toward the Duke of Chartres. The scene sets the Duchess’s public interest in Yves against the evident chill of her marriage, without suggesting that she and her attendant share the same object of desire.

Her title determines the formal terms in which others address her, but the nickname Madame Lucifer gives her a more transgressive reputation. Marie-Josèphe de la Croix reminds herself that the Duchess must be thought of by her proper title rather than by this pointed sobriquet, especially in public. The restraint belongs to the observer; the Duchess herself does little to conceal the behavior that makes the nickname seem apt. That gap between official designation and courtly shorthand captures the way reputation circulates around a woman whose actions invite both fascination and censure.

Defiance in Public

The Duchess’s cigar smoking becomes a recurring emblem of her refusal to fit quietly into the court’s feminine decorum. Marie-Josèphe sees her puff luxuriously on a small black cigar and pass it to Mlle d’Armagnac, who inhales and exhales contentedly. Marie-Josèphe wishes she dared approach and join them, but the pair remain a spectacle she can only observe. When the Duchess recognizes her as the little nun, Marie-Josèphe smiles shyly, hoping to be offered a taste of the tobacco. The episode makes the cigar more than a prop: it marks a small, visible circle of female companionship from which the newcomer is not yet included.

That private-looking interlude becomes a public confrontation when Louis XIV pushes aside branches and reveals the Duchess and Mlle d’Armagnac, their cigar smoke drifting around him and the Pope. The Duchess glares defiantly before curtseying. Louis XIV responds with fond disapproval and continues into the music salon, while the court follows. Her husband, embarrassed, ignores her. Afterward, the Duchess curses, throws the cigar stub onto the shining parquet, and burns her finger when she sucks it. The cigar’s embers threaten the wax and the wood as well as her hand, turning an act of defiance into an immediate, tangible disorder on the palace floor.

Marriage and Desire

The marriage appears in public chiefly through estrangement. The Duchess and the Duke of Chartres exchange no word or glance at the gathering where she watches Yves, and later he ignores her after Louis XIV discovers her smoking. At another meeting, she enters with Mlle d’Armagnac in a diamond-studded bodice, acknowledges the Chevalier de Lorraine’s salute with a dismissive gesture, and greets her father-in-law, Monsieur, and her mother-in-law, Madame. Madame answers with exquisitely cool politeness. The Duchess can fulfill the outward forms of family greeting while remaining at a distance from the people those forms connect her to.

Her attraction to Yves becomes more pointed when she and Mlle d’Armagnac arrive to spirit him away because the ladies want to meet him. Madame calls their manners disreputable and warns Marie-Josèphe that her brother must keep his vows. Marie-Josèphe insists that Yves would never break them. The Duchess’s conduct is thus framed by competing interpretations: to the court, her attention risks scandal; to Marie-Josèphe, it raises the question of her brother’s vulnerability to temptation. The evidence shows the Duchess actively drawing Yves into the company of women, not the outcome of that attention.

The Rejected Husband

Later, after the King’s company has left the state apartments and the rooms are emptying for the night, the Duchess asks Yves to accompany her. He offers to escort her to her husband. She laughs at the suggestion and makes clear that she wants nothing to do with the Duke of Chartres, calling Yves a disappointment as she sweeps away. The exchange sharpens what earlier scenes imply: the marital distance is not merely a failure of public conversation. At least in this moment, the Duchess openly rejects the husband whose title defines her place at court.

Narrative Significance

The Duchess’s scenes juxtapose strict ceremonial forms with gestures that refuse to be contained by them: a curtsey follows her defiant glare, family greetings coexist with emotional distance, and the prescribed escort to a husband is rejected with laughter. The narrative does not provide her private history or explain her motives, so her rebellion remains legible through action rather than confession. Instead, the recurring cigar, her attention to Yves, and her dismissal of her husband show how courtly reputation is made from visible conduct—and how a woman can occupy a highly regulated position while disrupting its expected performance.