The chateau of Bussy-Rabutin

« Bussy is not a grandiose residence, but it is magnificently built and the interiors are of a singular beauty, the likes of which are not to be found elsewhere. » Such were the proud terms in which the Count Roger de Bussy-Rabutin described his chateau. He was a lively and witty man, a writer who was a member of the Académie française and who, with his cousin Madame de Sévigné, invented the literary genre known as « rabutinages ». But the audacity and ferocity of his texts got him into trouble with Louis XIV who exiled him to his home in Burgundy. He had revealed too much about the affairs of some of the ladies at court in his book Histoire amoureuse des Gaules. Banned from court, abandoned by his mistress but ever the rebel, Bussy devised an intriguing form of revenge. He had some three hundred portraits painted, each accompanied by an eloquent inscription, an enigmatic emblem, or an impertinent motto. These recreate something of Bussy's own lost universe and survive today as a remarkable testimony to the spirit of the age of Louis XIV.