The Duke de Chartres would prefer to remain silent. Out of the question, replies Mme de Ventadour, firmly but respectfully. She’s found a way of calming the infanta, as exploitable as her fascination for Los Trufaldines — the troupe of Italian comic actors whose lodgings were a few steps from the Alcázar in Madrid — and she’s not going to let it pass. Supported by the regent, Mme de Ventadour arranges for the Duke de Chartres to sit at the infanta’s bedside and say to her whatever comes into his head. “Again, again!” the infanta implores him. Her laughter echoes through the big house.
The following day, after kissing her king’s portrait, the infanta goes to meet him. The interview takes place at Grand-Montrouge. She’s wearing a silver and sea-green dress trimmed with fur and adorned with a collar and clusters of rubies. The king is there to welcome her at her carriage door. Someone opens it; she steps down. According to a contemporary report: “The Queen falls on her knees to greet the King, and the King himself kneels as he raises her up.” Red as a cherry, the king says, “Madame, I am delighted that you have arrived in good health.” The infanta rises to her feet. Louis XV’s beauty takes her breath away. She’s never seen anyone who compares with him. Even in her reveries while contemplating her fiancé’s image, she’s never been able to create a boy so perfect. She’s suffused with love. And the feeling that pervades her is the very revelation of joy. She who has just left behind family and country puts herself entirely in the hands of this lord and king whom God has chosen for her. The little girl succumbs with great delight. The sight of the young king — his beautiful eyes, his elegance, his fluid movements — staggers her. An aura of perfection surrounds his first apparition, and that aura will reproduce itself, identically, at every one of her future meetings with Louis XV. He appears, and the ambient light gains in brilliance and warmth. Mariana Victoria feels a strange pang, a pang that merges with the most exalted happiness.
At the same moment — the moment when they see each other for the first time — a bolt, though not of the same passion, transpierces the king. Like his fiancée, he’s touched to the quick. He takes her hand, raises her up, kneels down. He has often done this. At the age of twelve, he’s already an artist in politeness and the refinements of courtesy. With his youth, and with a grace inherited from his mother, the bewitching Duchess of Burgundy, and developed daily by the Marshal de Villeroy, who will not rest until his charge walks, dances, eats, and rides horseback better than anyone in the kingdom, Louis XV is a combined incarnation of the child-king and courtly love. The infanta’s enchantment is understandable. And it would be a fairy tale if the young monarch would succumb to the little girl’s charm in like manner … Framed by the door of her carriage, the infanta looks too little to him, even minuscule, but that’s not what he registers immediately; no, what strikes and wounds him in that first moment is that she appears before him clasped in Maman Ventadour’s arms, plainly adored by the woman who, in his heart, occupies the place of his mother. In Maman Ventadour’s very greeting he senses the new distance between her and him, he intuits the exclusive, fanatic, blind-to-everything-else way his former governess cares for her “Mariannine.” The infanta is stricken with love for her king; the king is laid low by jealousy. As he dreaded, the duchess loves the little princess more than him. Death carried off his real mother, and now the infanta has robbed him of the woman who took his mother’s place. He’s orphaned again. He feels like crying, feels his face flushing while he pronounces words any automaton could mouth in his stead: “Madame, I am delighted that you have arrived in good health.”
This welcoming formula may well sound flat, and in any case banality is surely the order of the day. Since he cannot choose to remain silent, the boy utters as neutral a sentence as possible. But to the infanta’s ears, saluting her arrival in good health amounts to recognizing her worth. Arriving alive is no mean feat, but arriving in good health to boot! Blow the trumpets! Hail to victory! Let the king’s music sound! Standing next to Louis on one side and Mariana Victoria on the other, M. de Villeroy, the king’s tutor, and Mme de Ventadour, the infanta’s governess, exchange a complicit smile above their charges’ heads. They are measuring the success of their enterprise. M. de Villeroy, still vigorous and quite the flirt, would like to congratulate Mme de Ventadour, who was once his mistress, more expressly, and to do so with gestures that would recall their former affection. After all, they say through their smiles, the little king and the very little queen are our children.
Below them, the bride and groom are behaving like windup toys. “Monsieur,” “Madame,” “Your Majesty.” Such good children, such good conduct. Prints, written reports, and poems celebrate the idyllic union. The whole country starts dreaming. The politicians, of course, lend a hand to this idealizing enterprise. It’s important to make sure nobody questions the perfect world of appearances! Actually, neither the boy-king nor the queen-infanta give a thought to questioning it themselves. He, because he’s been raised to submit to it, and she, because she believes in it. But in the invisible recesses of their souls, they’re equally alone and lost, both of them, equally prey to emotions that baffle and ravage them.
Louis XV climbs back into his coach and sets off at once for the Louvre. There he will receive the infanta and escort her to her abode. He looks miserable and angry. Inside the carriage, which he shares with the regent, the Duke de Chartres (all of whose voices remain silent), the Duke de Bourbon, called “Monsieur le Duc,” who supervises the boy’s upbringing, the Count de Charolais, known for his unbridled licentiousness, and the Prince de Conti, a luxurious aesthete, a lover of art and patron of artists, the king says not a word. M. le Duc observes, as if to himself but loud enough to be heard, “This infanta is certainly an infant!” Nobody comments in return.
The infanta’s coach leaves after the king’s. The little girl is about to make her solemn entry into Paris. She sits on Mme de Ventadour’s lap. On her own lap, she’s holding Carmen-Doll, who like her is wearing a silver and sea-green dress and who, like her, stares at the Parisian people. The infanta and her doll are aware of the moment’s historical importance. The other dolls also perceive that a page of history is being written. This is to their credit, crammed into a trunk as they are. In the darkness, they must evaluate the event according to the level of sincerity audible in the ovations received. They’re difficult to fool, those other dolls, with their painted eyes, their sweet, impassive little faces, their miniature presences, and they’d like to be in Carmen-Doll’s place so that they could observe the more or less orchestrated outbursts of cheering, the more or less purchased enthusiasm of the jubilant public, the people who can be found in the front ranks of the spectators at every royal entrance into Paris. Besides the infanta, her governess, and her red-eyed favorite, the other occupants of the carriage are Madame (the Princess Palatine) and the princesses du sang, the royal princesses. This is a coach-load with the potential to amuse or to terrify the infanta and her doll. For a second, the child is arrested by Madame’s improbable facial features, but she doesn’t dwell on them. She’s yearning with all her might toward the Parisians, toward the wonders they’ve created for her, toward the magnificent spectacle of the capital transformed for its queen.
The cortege enters through the Porte Saint-Jacques and heads up the street of the same name, continues past the Petit Châtelet and along Rue de la Lanterne, the Pont Notre-Dame, the Rues Planche-Milbray, des Arcs, des Lombards, Saint-Denis, de la Ferronnerie, de la Chaussetterie, Saint-Honoré, du Chantre … The procession passes under triumphal arches and between buildings whose facades are covered with tapestries and festooned with little lamps. On the Place de Grève, acrobats dance in midair and throw bouquets to the infanta. The ovations are deafening. There’s an enormous crowd everywhere she passes. People fight to get closer to her carriage. Bodyguards intervene roughly, so much so that the infanta cries out at the top of her voice, “Oh! Don’t beat those poor people who want to see me.” And she shows herself, all smiles, blowing kiss afte
r kiss. The Latin inscription on the banners is read and translated for her: Venit expectata dies, felicis adventus ad Lutetiam (The long-awaited day has come, the happy arrival in Lutetia). The cortege reaches the courtyard of the Louvre late in the afternoon. Once you’ve been lifted up on the wings of happiness, there’s a good chance you’ll stay aloft through what follows, at least for a time; and so the ensuing ceremonies carry the infanta to the upper regions of rapture, for the king is there again, waiting for her. She kneels, he raises her up and kneels: “Madame, I am delighted that you have arrived …” Is this scene going to keep replaying itself over and over? Let it, let it, begs the infanta, aglow with the sacred flame, the child madly in love. She’s moving in a world of enchantment. Everything that happens to her from now on she will desire for all eternity.
MADRID, MARCH 1722
Regaled with an Auto-da-Fé
In Madrid, the atmosphere is festive: everyone is thoroughly gratified by the young princess’s recovery. People pray, people sing, people dance. There’s even been an announcement that Louise Élisabeth is finally going to make a public appearance. And she, who hasn’t understood the first thing about what’s in store, has agreed. Faced with this sudden display of goodwill, and still hopeful that they’ve brought a normal — that is, docile — young woman into the family, the king and queen decide to give her a splendid celebration, a purely Spanish treat, an awesome spectacle directed by their supreme artist of terror and votary of death: the grand inquisitor. She rejected the animals’ dark blood; she’s going to be taught to appreciate the blood of heretics. The planned treat is nothing less than a general auto-da-fé, a grand exhibition of the triumph of Christianity. Forty-two years earlier, on June 30, 1680, Louise Élisabeth’s aunt, Marie-Louise d’Orléans, first wife of Charles II of Spain, was regaled with a similar extravaganza — as a gesture of welcome, as a rite of initiation, and above all as a way to “cheer up” her husband, El Hechizado.
An auto-da-fé? Louise Élisabeth wonders what that could be. Her experience — as a young girl of twelve raised in Paris in an environment only tepidly religious — hasn’t provided her with any real notion of what the expression signifies. Philip V enjoins her to listen attentively, to observe and admire the effects achieved by the providential mission of the Holy Office, to share in the exaltation of finding herself suddenly uplifted practically to the grand inquisitor’s side, as it were, in his combat against heretics. These words fail to enlighten her. When the day has come and she steps onto the balcony in Plaza Mayor with the king, the queen, the Prince of Asturias, the infantes, and the ladies of the court, she’s struck by the gigantic architecture of the Theater of Crime and Punishment that has been erected during the night. Her eyes grow wide. The grand inquisitor’s chair, complete with armrests, is raised a little higher than the royal loge, so that he dominates the king. The wide platform awaiting the arrival of the convicted heretics has been built at the same level as the royal balcony, thus allowing its occupants a good view of the different characters in the drama: the officiants, the executioners, and the condemned. An amphitheater for the Supreme Council of the Inquisition also overlooks the platform, and somewhat lower but still perfectly conceived as far as visibility is concerned, there’s an amphitheater for the general public. The people must not miss an iota of the horror either, and they must rejoice in it with their masters.
What with fear (enormous), excitement (total), and compassion (minimal), the entire Plaza Mayor is in the grip of a terrible impatience. It makes children fight in the aisles, horses whinny, mules become agitated, and beggars grow bold; a legion of the blind and the crippled, of monsters with fantastic deformities, assails the powerful strutting about the loges. The agitation proliferates, rising from the depths if not the dregs, presenting a briefly tempting invitation to chaos that runs through the Plaza Mayor and which Louise Élisabeth, wedged between her repulsive husband and her resentful mother-in-law, inhales like a heavy scent. It’s allowed to go on just as long as necessary, this temptation to rise up, to perish very fast but not without having revolted against the order that has eternally encompassed your annihilation. The uproar is part of the spectacle of the auto-da-fé, of its flamboyant vehemence, of its absolute violence. It’s the naive preamble to that spectacle, incorporated so that subservient minds will be all the more indelibly imprinted with the terrorizing image of the Inquisition.
A confused impression of music, of hymns, and of the color yellow. That’s what Louise Élisabeth notices first, the yellow of the tunics the condemned prisoners are wearing. The tunic is the sambenito, the garment of infamy, made of yellow sackcloth and decorated with two St. Andrew’s crosses, one on the back and one on the front. The condemned proceed in order, led by the reconciliados, those who renounced their heresy under torture. They’re going to get off with a public flogging, and then they’ll be exhibited in Madrid, bound and riding on donkeys, each naked back scored with the marks of the whip. Next come the heretics who have been sentenced to prison, followed by those sentenced to the galleys. Finally the prisoners who are the real actors in the drama move forward, the ones who are to be burned at the stake. Burned, but with this nuance of difference, evidence of the tribunal’s clemency: some of the condemned, namely those who confessed their crimes after their convictions, will not be burned alive; first they’ll be strangled to death. The yellow splotches, those infamous silhouettes, those demon’s henchmen, shuffle along, heads bowed, with no sensation in their tortured limbs but the sting of the hot wax that drips onto their hands from their lighted candles.
“That last group, who are they?” the princess asks, pointing to the barefoot prisoners at the end of the procession; each is gagged, and each carries a candle.
“Those are the irredeemable, the ones who persist in their blindness and persevere in their evil, the obstinate, the recidivists, the heretics, the damned. They’re the no-reconciliados, the unreconciled.”
“And what’s going to be done to them?”
“They will be burned alive, Your Ladyship.”
And accompanying his gesture with a thin smile, the speaker indicates the row of pyres, the accumulations of firewood. He waits for her to express her admiration. She merely nods her head. The prince her husband, adding a bit of detail — is this some special attention paid to her, to her femininity? — declares that there are eleven women in this auto-da-fé, eleven convicted female heretics.
On the evening after the auto-da-fé, while a supper presided over by the grand inquisitor and the king is going forward in the salons of the Royal Alcázar, the smell of the heretics’ burned flesh wafts up from the plaza. The common people are encouraged to relish those fumes, to conflate them with the succulent tastes of the grilled meats they’re getting ready to consume in the bosom of their family, feeling closer to one another than ever before. For the mixture of affection and resentment that unites them, the everyday realities of birth and death, of toil and want, have all been supplemented and eclipsed by hatred of the heretic, hatred of the Jew. Compassion is one of the devil’s temptations; denunciation is the proper course. False converts, witches, libertines, dissolute women, brigands, sodomites, usurers must be tracked down, located, and then denounced — in secrecy and anonymity — to the Inquisition, so that the party may continue, so that the procession of the punished may resume and increase, ever longer and longer, and so that (this never hurts) more confiscated goods may be enjoyed. The people eagerly devour the animal they’re feasting on. At intervals, they exchange greasy kisses.
PARIS, SPRING 1722
An Abundance of Duties and Festivities
The king is a twelve-year-old boy of normal size. The infanta, soon to turn four, is rather small for her age. Visually, however, the discrepancy isn’t so obtrusive. They’re both so beautiful. The child-couple they form gladdens the hearts of all who see them. The king holds his fiancée’s hand. He walks at her pace. “The apartments where my great-great-grandmother, Anne of Austria —” he begins. Th
e little girl repeats the name like an echo. “She was a great-great-grandmother to you both,” Mme de Ventadour specifies. But Mme de Ventadour can’t be a mother to us both, the young king thinks to himself. And he continues on his way, as gallantly as possible. He’s received the mission of installing Mariana Victoria in her residence. He does so with the same assiduous application he brings to every ceremony. The infanta reads this diligence as the equivalent of her own ardor. She trots along at his side, too excited to look at the apartments that have been renovated to receive her. She sees red, red everywhere, here and there a streak of gold, and that’s all. They walk over to a window; someone picks up the infanta and shows her the Seine and its boats. “The Bidasoa?” the child asks, giddy from travel and love. The king returns to his apartments in the Tuileries. The infanta, magnetized by her king, would like to accompany him. The parting kiss has been exchanged, the tutor and the governess have said their goodbyes, it’s time for the infanta to leave the king, yet she follows his footsteps. Marshal de Villeroy reacts sternly: “Madame,” he says to the pink, distraught little girl, “the king asks that you go no farther, indeed commands you as your lord and master.”
The Exchange of Princesses Page 9
