Chartres and Mlle d’Armagnac

The relationship between the Duke of Chartres and Mlle d’Armagnac is presented as a secret affair whose intimacy becomes unmistakable when Marie-Josèphe encounters them together in the château. Their masked flirtation turns into urgent physical intimacy, then into a pointed act of denial when they are surprised. The scene makes secrecy part of the relationship’s character: the lovers conceal their identities in costume, but their gestures, disordered clothing, and familiarity reveal what their words try to obscure.

An Affair Behind the Masks

The encounter begins on a staircase after an evening of celebration. Marie-Josèphe hears laughter and footsteps on the threadbare carpet before seeing a woman masked in hummingbird colors and a man wearing a goat or satyr mask. They press together in the narrow passage. She recognizes the Duke of Chartres immediately, while the woman appears to her to be Mlle d’Armagnac, certainly not his wife. The masks allow the pair to move through the château in disguise, but they do little to make their closeness discreet.

The Duke nuzzles Mlle d’Armagnac’s throat with the nose and horns of his mask. She throws her head back, laughing breathlessly. Her fashionable headdress sits crookedly; her hair and ribbons come loose among the mask’s feathers. She pulls off her fontanges and hurls them down the stairs, then throws herself against him. They stumble upward together, kissing and fumbling at one another’s clothes. The disarray is not incidental: the scene shows their desire through physical action, while the costume and abandoned ornament make the encounter’s hidden setting visible in material form.

Intimacy and Exposure

The Duke tears at the lacings of Mlle d’Armagnac’s bodice, and she rebukes him playfully. When he notices Marie-Josèphe, the interruption briefly changes the balance of the scene. Mlle d’Armagnac pulls her hands from beneath the gold-laced skirts of his coat and embroidered waistcoat. One of his stockings has slipped down and rumpled around his knee. Her mask is straightened to conceal her identity, but her habit is disarranged and exposes her breasts; she tugs at the bodice to cover herself. A jeweled beauty patch below her left aureole catches Marie-Josèphe’s attention.

These details make their attempted concealment fragile. The masks hide faces, yet their clothes disclose the haste of their intimacy, and their bodies remain legible to the witness. Mlle d’Armagnac’s glare and effort to restore her appearance register the embarrassment of being seen, while the Duke’s response is colder and more assured. He claims not to know Marie-Josèphe and says she has mistaken him for someone else. After raising his mask, however, he recognizes her and invites her to accompany them. The invitation converts exposure into provocation: rather than restore a boundary around the affair, he treats the witness as someone who might be drawn into it. Marie-Josèphe is horrified and refuses.

Secrecy, Performance, and Disregard

The Duke lowers his mask again, reclaiming the satyr’s face, and returns to Mlle d’Armagnac. He kisses and nips her breast, baring it once more, while she strokes his long curled hair and pulls him closer. She continues to gaze at Marie-Josèphe. When the Duke rises, her beauty patch has stuck to his chin—a small, conspicuous remnant of the encounter that undermines the mask’s promise of concealment. Their laughter and hurried movement up the stairs carry the affair onward despite the interruption.

The scene distinguishes the lovers’ responses to being discovered. Mlle d’Armagnac straightens her mask, covers herself, and glares; the Duke denies his identity, then openly renews the invitation and resumes their intimacy. Their different gestures do not establish their private motives, but they show how each handles the immediate risk of recognition. The Duke’s ease is especially pointed: he turns a moment of exposure into a performance of impunity, while Marie-Josèphe remains constrained by embarrassment and courtesy, curtsying as the pair pass her.

Their departure makes that imbalance concrete. They squeeze past Marie-Josèphe on the landing and ignore her curtsy. Mlle d’Armagnac’s door opens; silk rustles and tears, and the door slams. The staircase, hallway, and château then fall silent and dark. The lovers withdraw into a private room, leaving Marie-Josèphe outside with the knowledge of what she has seen. The scene gives the affair a physical boundary—the closed door—without resolving the danger of its discovery.

Courtly Context and Narrative Significance

Elsewhere, the Duke’s costume for a court entertainment is described by Lucien de Chrétien as nearly transparent, and Lucien thinks the Duke’s lovers will enjoy it. This passing observation places the staircase encounter within a broader indication that the Duke has lovers, without specifying the full nature or duration of those other relationships. It also creates a contrast between his public display in court costume and the private disorder of the lovers’ masked meeting: in both settings, clothing draws attention to the body, but on the staircase it becomes evidence of an intimacy the pair are trying to hide.

Mlle d’Armagnac’s presence is also registered in a later social exchange in which she jokes about whipping a slave for dereliction and suggests that the brother should be whipped instead; the ladies laugh at her daring wit. That moment does not describe her affair with the Duke, but it shows her participating in the same courtly company in which private conduct and public status coexist. The relationship itself remains most clearly defined by the staircase scene: desire expressed through touch and disarray, secrecy sustained by masks and denial, and a witness who cannot be made to forget what the lovers have revealed. Their final retreat closes the immediate encounter, not the tension between concealment and recognition that gives the affair its narrative force.