The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down

by Jesse Browner

  But if all this still failed to distract the court - if, as Mme de Sevigne asserted, "the entertainments were to become boring by their very multiplicity" - the king could always pull off the miracle of a perfectly choreographed fete, such as that held on the night of July 18, 1668. Early in the evening, the king and queen set off for a stroll through the gardens, followed by some twelve hundred courtiers, all of whom were aware that something was afoot but had no idea of what it might be. As they turned a corner into a secluded alley, they came, almost as if by chance, upon a pentagonal structure made entirely of woven branches. Within, five tables were set with delicacies: one had been built up to resemble a mountain, its caverns filled with cold meats; another had become a palace, constructed entirely of marzipan and pastry; yet another was a pyramid of crystallized fruit; the others held vases of liqueurs and platters of caramels, all charmingly draped in flowers. Potted orange trees were hung with candied oranges, while, at the center of the structure, a thirty-foot fountain played. After the guests had refreshed themselves, the king set out in his barouche, the queen in her chaise, and the courtiers followed in carriages. They passed down a linden alley and came, again as if by magic, to a theater, with seating for two thousand, designed by Carlo Vigarani and erected in secret over the past several days. It was covered by greenery without, by tapestries within, and was lit by thirty-two crystal chandeliers hung from the rafters. The stage was flanked by columns of bronze and lapis. The play, a light pastoral comedy by Moliere, was set in a garden, and the set designed to reveal the gardens behind, giving the impression that the entire park was present onstage. After the show, the company headed out once again, led by His Majesty, who knew just where he was going but managed to give the impression that he was following his whim. Next came ballet in an octagonal dance hall clad in marble and porphyry, an equally temporary structure thrown up in a secluded nook of the gardens. After another brief expedition, the company came upon an octagonal dining hall rampant with marble satyrs, dolphins, and gods. Fruit trees and flowersfilled every available space. At the center of the room was a small mountain, crowned by a statue of Pegasus and enlivened by tumbling streams, surrounded by a circular table set for 450 guests, who chose from among 280 dishes. The rest of the group ate in side halls. Mme de Sevigne dined at the king's table, a moment she would never forget. As the medianoche wound down, the guests, always behind the king, began to wander back toward the chateau when suddenly the night exploded with fireworks. The first were set off at some distance away, highlighting the palace, but gradually they drew closer and closer until the company found itself entirely surrounded by jets of flame and sparks erupting from two hundred four-foot vases. When these died down, to the relief of many, it appeared that the evening had come to an end, but just then the Grotto of Thetis was set ablaze with Roman candles, the sky above it traced by rockets with Louis's double-L emblem. Timed to the very minute, the sun rose just as the last spark went out, and the king and queen set off for Saint Germain in their carriage.

  The fete had been pulled off at great expense, but that was hardly the point. The message that came through loud and clear was that this was something only the Sun King could ever hope to pull off. The mere fact that ten thousand workers had labored in total secrecy, practically under the very noses of the court, was nothing short of miraculous, but the true success lay in the way it had been designed to highlight Louis's absolute authority. He had only to turn a corner, serene and unabashed, for entire theaters, dance halls, and banquet halls to spring up in his path, mountains to rise, rivers to erupt. The very statues "seemed to dance and express their pleasure at being visited by such a great monarch attended by such a fine court." And the sun itself, "jealous of the perquisites of the night," kindly waits for the king's entertainments to end before showing itself. In all of Le Pautre's engravings of the evening, the king is always in the center foreground, his back to the viewer, at the heart of a throng and yet untouched and untouchable, entirely isolated in his glory.

  What wouldn't you and I give to have been a member of that company and to bask in his presence? Since we weren't, we might tell ourselves that, tempting as it sounds, we wouldn't have given up our freedom for it. But imagine, just for the sake of argument, that it were possible. Imagine the thrill of receiving the most sought-after invitation, then multiply it a thousandfold, because this is not an evening's glory but a lifetime's, an eternity's. You are not visiting, you are at home, among your own, forever. Like being called to heaven, anything you need to let go of to get in is entirely expendable. Now what would you give? Is there any way in which you would fail or refuse to conform? What possible attraction could there be in dissidence?

  To submit to the etiquette of Versailles was to abandon any pretense, however forlorn, at being a free agent. Your choice was stark and simple: give in or get out. In the king's house, you lived by the king's rules. Of course, Louis had not actually invented etiquette, but he did perfect its evolution as an exquisite straitjacket. At Versailles, you quite literally could not take a step, could not raise a spoon to your lips, could not powder your wig without first considering who you might offend and whether they were in a position to punish you for it. With all their real power gone, the nobles bickered and litigated with obsessive zeal over the infinite nuances of precedence. As Saint-Simon put it:

  He was conscious that the substantial favours he had to bestow were not nearly sufficient to produce a continual effect; he had therefore to invent imaginary ones, and no one was so clever in devising petty distinctions and preferences which aroused jealousy and emulation.

  The king employed a full-time official whose sole function was to rule in disputes over whose carriage might pass first through a gate, who was allowed to step through a certain door ahead of whom. Mme de Sevigne relates an unseemly tussle between Mme de Gevres and Mme d'Arpajon:

  Mme d'Arpajon was ahead of me. I thought Gevres expected me to give her my place, but I owed her something from the other day, and I paid her back in full and didn't budge. Mademoiselle [the duchesse de Lorraine] was on her bed. So she was compelled to take her place at the bottom, below the dais - very annoying. Mademoiselle's drink was served and the serviette had to be offered. I spied Mme de Gevres slipping her glove off her skinny hand. I nudged Mme d'Arpajon, who understood, took off her own glove and advanced a step, cut out Gevres and took and offered the serviette. Gevres was covered with shame and looked very sheepish.

  In various forms, such silent struggles took place a thousand times a day at court, but it is certain that if the object of servility had been a son of France or the king instead of his niece, the serviette skirmish would have ended in dangerously bad blood, and perhaps bloodshed.

  Of course, access to the king was strictly limited, as it was to varying degrees to all princes of the blood. The only place one was allowed to follow the king was in the park, and only the highest ranking nobleman in the bedchamber was privileged to hold His Majesty's candlestick at the couchee. Only the most exalted were permitted in the ruelles on either side of the bed.

  But perhaps the strangest and most alien aspect of these rules was that governing the use of chairs. These rules were observed with a prissy obsessiveness that appears to us to border on perversity. If you were not fully versed in every nicety of seating etiquette - which was complicated by the fact that it was common to receive guests of inferior rank in bed - you could easily find yourself in trouble. When Louis welcomed the exiled James II to France and established him at Saint-Germain, saying "this is your home," Mme de Sevigne's very first thought was "I don't know how they will have arranged the princesses' chairs." One of the first things out of La Grange's mouth in the opening scene of Moliere's Les Precieuses ridicules is "They could hardly bring themselves to ask us to sit down." And when Mademoiselle, heartbroken by the king's refusal to allow her to marry her one true love, actually invited Mme de Sevigne to kneel down beside her bed, it was as if every social barrier had been swept aside: "On this occasion
," she confessed, "I have been through emotions one does not often feel for people of such rank."

  There were four basic types of seat at court and you had to know precisely when and if you were allowed to occupy them, and in whose presence. Except when no member of the direct royal family was present, only the king and queen were permitted to sit in armchairs. When Louis sat Mme de Maintenon in an armchair in the presence of his grandchildren, it was a clear signal that, as many had suspected, he had finally married her (in such secrecy that, to this day, the date of the marriage is uncertain). Grandchildren of France (that is, those of the king and Monsieur) were also allowed the armchair if no one of higher rank, including their own parents, was present.

  Next in prestige below the armchair was the straight-backed, armless chair, which was permitted to princes and princesses of the blood, cardinals, duchesses, foreign princes, and consorts of Spanish grandees, but only in the presence of grandchildren of France or their inferiors. When Monsieur asked his brother to allow Madame to occupy a chair in the presence of the queen, the king refused point-blank, explaining, "I did not think I should ever allow anything that would bring him too close [in rank] to me."

  Next came the tabouret, a low stool with fixed legs. Dukes, foreign princes, Spanish grandees, and noblewomen took the tabouret in the presence of grandchildren of France, but lesser nobles had to stand. In the presence of the dauphin (the crown prince) and his wife, and of the children of France (the sons and daughters of the king and Monsieur), the grandchildren of France, princesses of the blood, cardinals, duchesses, foreign princesses, and the consorts of Spanish grandees took the ta­bouret, while all others stood. In the presence of the king and queen, only the dauphin, dauphine, children and grandchildren of France, princesses of the blood, duchesses, foreign princesses, and consorts of Spanish grandees could take the tabouret. Cardinals, too, were permitted the tabouret, but only if the king were absent. All others stood. In other circumstances, courtiers were also allowed to sit on ployants (folding stools) and placets (cush­ions) on the floor.

  By far the most contentious of these seats was the tabouret Mme de Sévigné calls it the "sacred tabouret" - because the categories assigned to it were somewhat fluid. One could never become the sovereign or his direct descendant, but one could be made a duchess. To "take the tabouret7 meant to assume one's rank at court, like Balzac's heroine:

  The duchesse de Langeais, a Navarreine by birth, came of a ducal house which had made a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis XIV. Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a tabouret.

  The other wonderful thing about a tabouret was that one could earn it. One of the many perks of being the king's lover was the very real opportunity of being offered a tabouret when he had finished with you. Since, with the unique exception of Mme de Maintenon, it was a near certainty that he would finish with you sooner or later, it may well be that the tabouret, which would last a lifetime, was anticipated not as a consolation prize but as the ultimate goal of the transaction. Consider one lucky castoff, Mme de Fontanges:

  Mme de Fontanges is a duchess with an income of 20,000 ecus; today she was receiving compliments on her day-bed. The King went there openly. She takes her official stool tomorrow and then goes to spend Easter in an abbey the King has presented to one of her sisters. This is a kind of separation that will pay homage to his confessor's severity. Some people say that this establishment smacks of dismissal. I don't really believe it, but time will show.

  Time did show - it was a dismissal.

  The downside to the tabourets accessibility was that it was possible to believe that one was entitled to it when one was not. In 1704, the duke of Mantua surrendered his duchy to Louis rather than have it ravaged in the course of the Italian war. Louis reciprocated by inviting the duke to Versailles, where he was received with the highest honors of a foreign prince. These included being called "cousin" by the king, being allowed to drive his carriage into the great courtyards of the Louvre and Versailles, and even being presented to the duchesse de Bourgogne in her ruelle. When he died shortly thereafter, his widow retired to a convent but soon bored of it and made the decision to present herself at court. Since she was a Lorraine and drew a court pension, and since her mother was close to Mme de Maintenon, and since her late husband had done Louis a considerable service, she had good reason to anticipate a royal reception.

  She arrived . . . with every intention of adopting rank equal to that of a Granddaughter of France, that is to say offering her hand and an armchair to no one, no matter who they were [save King and Queen], and not accompanying visitors one step towards the door.

  The first sign that her ambitions were misplaced emerged during a visit to the widow of the Marechal de Bellefonds. She was "so dumbfounded to find herself offered only a ployant that she sat down; but when her senses returned somewhat later, she left and never again set foot inside the door." Residing at the chateau de Vincennes, she soon found herself twiddling her thumbs for lack of titled callers. It turns out, as only the duchess of Mantua was unaware, that Mme de Maintenon was in a "disobliging mood" and that the king, rankled by the intrigues of the Lorraines, "had no wish to give the Duchess any special place at court." He ordered that she present herself at Versailles in morning dress, thereby making it impossible for her to attend any function at which full court dress was required. This proved to be a fatal snub to her pretensions.

  The indignities, every one a matter of seating, piled up fast and furious. At Versailles, the king refused to kiss her and remained standing (thus preventing her from taking a seat of any kind), as did the king's grandsons. Within fifteen minutes, she was dismissed and sent back to Vincennes, where she continued to be visited by no one.

  Mme d'Elbeuf [her mother], who was not so easily discouraged, next tried to obtain for her a chair with a back in Mme la Duchesse de Bourgogne's drawing-room. Now the wives and daughters of reigning princes, whose ministers are recognized by all the courts of Europe, were traditionally offered chairs with backs at the late queen's receptions, but for the first visit only; thenceforward they had only tabourets like any one else, and no different from the French duchesses. The Duchess of Mecklenburg was granted this privilege, but the Duchess of Mantua was not, although her mother asked for it on four separate occasions.

  Rather than accept a tabouret, which she considered beneath her dignity, the duchess of Mantua chose not to sit at all, and never returned to court. Instead, she moved to Paris, where she expected her rank to be appreciated. Again she was wrong. She ran into trouble almost immediately when she challenged the right of the prince and princesse de Montbazon's coach to precede hers through the second gate of the Palais Royal. When neither side agreed to back down, a brawl erupted between the coachmen, M. de Montbazon threatening to thrash anyone who touched his horses. Eventually, it was discovered that the two coaches might just squeeze through at the same time, and bloodshed was averted, but the scandal did nothing to improve the duchess's prospects.

  She soon came to see that haughtiness was getting her nowhere. She changed her tone, paying visits without waiting to receive a first call, "driving like anyone else in a two-horse coach." She offered her armchairs freely and even conducted most ladies as far as the door. Her newfound humility was a hit; the duchesse de Lauzun broke the ice with a first visit and society followed. It was decidedly not court society, but it was better than nothing. She began to throw fashionable card parties, the ultimate acknowledgment that her position was irreparable.

  Her grandiose aspirations to royal rank melted away and all her schemes for being great at Court were succeeded by the ambition to be a good hostess in Paris.

  She might have convinced Saint-Simon of that, but she couldn't convince herself. She was dead within the year at age twenty-five, presumably of a broken heart.

  If the duchess of Mantua had agreed in 1709 to take a stool instead of insisting on a chair, all her social setbacks could have been avoided. But she under
stood every bit as well as the king that there was far more at stake than sore knees and dusty hems even at the cost of her own public humiliation, she was determined to uphold the order that had secured everything she and her family possessed: wealth, rank, reputation, tradition, and continuity. As the king himself put it:

  Those who think that ambitions of this kind are mere affairs of ceremonial are wholly deluded; there is nothing in these matters which does not request careful thought or which is not capable of having serious consequences. The people whom we rule . . . judge according to what they see on the outside, so that it is most usually by the place and rank that they measure their respect and their obedience.

  By refusing to sit down in the king's house, the duchess was not bucking the reigning ideology, but in fact acting out a cruel obeisance to it.

  Almost everyone did, from Vatel, the prince de Conde's chef, who stabbed himself through the heart rather than serve the king an unworthy meal; to the due d'Antin, who, at his chateau PetitBourg, made a precise replica of Mme de Maintenon's rooms at Saint Cyr, down to the very way her books were stacked on the table. Upon a visit from Louis XIV, d'Antin had an entire avenue of chestnut trees silently uprooted overnight, as the king slept, rather than obstruct His Majesty's view at breakfast. You do what you have to do. Or, at least, most of us do.