P.S. My dear maman, i been a little sick, but it is nothing. I am feeling very fine and packing my doll trunks for Meudon.
The King came to see me yesterday and loves me well, to my grate delite. He sends you and my dear papa his best wishes and kisses your hands, your feet, and your whole persons.
Mariana Victoria
She doesn’t forget anything about Spain and Spanish and speaks French at first timidly but then “wonderfully.” She also amuses herself by saying some Italian words she’s learned from her mother. Her pleasure in speaking, and in speaking several languages (among them Small Dog), makes the fact of the king’s silence all the more glaring.
The infanta’s at her best when the king’s visit is announced and they walk together in her garden. The onlookers drown in emotion. Mme de Ventadour has tears in her eyes: “She took the King’s hand led him into her garden they had a meal just the two of them with no one to assist her … and sometimes [she] let go the King’s hand and went and picked some flowers for him they kissed each other warmly.”
The infanta prays he will come again soon.
One fine day in May, the two children are dressed in white aprons and straw hats. A gardener teaches them to plant tulip bulbs under glass cloches. This takes place in the garden of the Tuileries, not far from the little billiards room built expressly for the king. A few days later, the infanta reciprocates the favor and invites her “husband.” Servants shade the couple under a saffron-yellow umbrella. The king and the queen-infanta approach slowly, as do the select few allowed to share this intimate moment. At the instant when they’re about to take some refreshment in a jasmine bower, an oboe and viol begin to play a duet. “They are sweet enough to eat,” says Mme de Ventadour. The expression is soon on everyone’s lips.
The infanta’s garden, however, the microcosm of her brand-new reign, does not completely enclose her. Various excursions are organized on her behalf, to Boulogne, Saint-Cloud, Meudon, or — as in this case — La Muette. It’s a hot, sunny day; the infanta is riding in a half-covered calèche, the king on horseback beside her. Normally she would exult in such a situation, but because it’s so hot, she grows concerned for the king. She continues to worry during the night and finally orders that a request be sent to her father, asking him to write to Marshal de Villeroy and tell him to “let the King sit in the carriage with her so that the sun can do him no harm.”
In June the king comes to tell the infanta goodbye. Together they take a last walk in her garden. Mariana Victoria panics. What can this mean? Is she going to stay here alone while the king lives at Versailles? The king, as always, is polite and hurried. He can’t stay long. A great many people have come to bid him farewell. He’s extremely busy with preparations for his departure. She doesn’t want to cry in his presence, but as soon as he’s gone, she throws herself on the ground and sobs.
The king returns to Versailles on June 15. It’s been decided that the infanta will join him in two days. She can breathe again. The Princess Palatine, for whom visiting her in Versailles would require a much greater effort than going to the Old Louvre, hides her irritation. She doesn’t want to dampen her young friend’s joy. The infanta’s entourage is disconsolate: “I am indeed vexed,” Mme de Ventadour writes to Spain, “that Cardinal de Noailles is making us go to Versailles, we were beginning to settle into the Louvre most comfortably, for the Queen could walk out into her garden from her cabinet and had a beautiful terrace on the riverbank.” Her garden, the infanta’s garden, that marvelous place made entirely to her measure, the dazzle of her first spring in France, her fairyland of perfect love — Mariana Victoria leaves all that behind without regrets. She has but one thought: to rejoin the king.
On the morning of her departure, amid a great confusion of trunks and furniture, M. le Duc comes in unexpectedly. He desires, he says, to assure himself that everything is in order. What order? grumbles Carmen-Doll. She too was “most comfortably settled in” and loved to hail the boatmen from the balcony. The infanta takes refuge in a corner and watches the terrible fellow bustle about like a madman, surveying what was once her domain. His presence paralyzes her. She whispers to Carmen-Doll, “The one-eyed man has the evil eye.”
Did the one-eyed man hear her? In one giant step, he’s looming above them, he raises his arm as though to crush them. His shadow covers them completely.
MADRID, JUNE 1722
La Quadra’s Bouquets
In those days, Death was mowing left and right. At the slightest sign of weakness, he came a-running. People with that monumental scythe hanging over their heads tended not to waste a minute. There was no time for uncertainties and long apprenticeships. No time for adolescence, which provides a sort of vacant lot for experience. With luck, you moved directly from childish weakness and the traps that beset it to adulthood, and then you had two major tasks: work and reproduction. Work: for the poor, it began when a child was capable of standing upright. Reproduction: for the poor as for the rich, it was a matter to be decided by nature. At around twelve or thirteen, a girl reached childbearing age and was therefore marriageable.
The Princess of Asturias has passed her twelfth birthday, and her illness seems to be truly over. Her head has returned to its normal proportions, her skin eruptions have vanished without a trace. She takes little care of her appearance herself, but she does let her ladies-in-waiting fuss around her. As unamiable as ever, she often shuts herself up with her women. It’s thanks to them that she learns Spanish and, perhaps while they’re playing with the words together, discovers gaiety. Hers is a spirit bound to clash sharply with the sinister duennas in long black dresses who have been charged with her guidance. Fairly quickly, the princess starts to exist in two registers: one of them, the one she shows to the Prince of Asturias, to Philip V, to Elisabeth Farnese, and to the court, is her old self — glum, uncommunicative, sulky, and made still worse by her present circumstances; the other is her new self, mocking and insolent, which appears only when she’s in the company of her women. They are twenty-seven in number, and they’re by no means all as wild as her three favorites: La Quadra and the two Kalmikov sisters, twins who have a gift for hysterical laughter. The spontaneous lessons she receives from her ladies make up her entire education. She sees no dancing masters or singing masters or writing masters; and should such persons be assigned to her, she’d have no qualms about snubbing them. The only master she accepts is a “master of equitation,” and she proves to be assiduous in her riding exercises. Philip V sees this as a good sign, as he himself never feels right except when he’s on horseback — on horseback or in the conjugal embrace. Don Luis gives his bride a phaeton and six little black horses. Every day she gallops up and down the paths of the Buen Retiro and makes some sensational entrances into the courtyards of the convents she visits.
After one riding lesson, she feels painful cramps in her lower abdomen, her legs won’t carry her anymore, her back aches. And to top it all, something that stuns and frightens her: she’s bleeding from her crotch. Blood is flowing out of her sex, staining her stockings and spreading onto her skirt. She sends her women away and spends the night in terror, lying on a towel with her thighs clamped together. In the morning, her sheets are soiled too. La Quadra forces her to get up. She explains to the girl that she’s in no danger of dying, on the contrary, now she’s capable of giving life, she has her period, she’s a woman. Louise Élisabeth doesn’t look pleased at the prospect. La Quadra has her sit on the edge of the bed and puts a basin on the floor between her feet. On her knees, she gently slips off the girl’s damp, blood-stained linen. She dabs perfume on her. The princess lays aside her tragic mask, bends down to La Quadra, who’s clasping her tightly, and kisses her on the mouth. La Quadra, broad-hipped, very tall, and something of an oddball, with her multicolored mantillas and her long, loose-fitting, décolleté blouses, gains greater and greater authority over the other ladies-in-waiting. And over the princess? Not really; Louise Élisabeth is beyond anyone’s control. She’s not
answerable to her favorite or to anyone else. Nonetheless, she does have some moments of contentment when La Quadra presents her with big bouquets of flowers picked especially for her. She has a fondness for yellow flowers.
Joy isn’t necessarily something she’s familiar with, but it may be that she feels the suddenness of a happy surprise, a drop in anxiety, a fugitive well-being that lasts for the duration of her pleasure with La Quadra.
The Princess of Asturias is nubile. Should the date of her fleshly marriage to Don Luis be changed? The sooner he produces a successor, the surer the monarchy’s future will be. Don Luis begs that the date of August 25 be moved up. But in the end, nothing is changed. The princess is deemed still too delicate — she looks no older than her twelve and a half years — and the prince insufficiently sure of himself. At the Spanish court (and on this point the reign of the Borbones, in spite of its French origins, strictly follows the model of the Austrian Habsburgs), ceremonies or entertainments, weddings or seasonal sojourns, all must take place on the prescribed date. Their Majesties’ customary program is as inflexible as a calendar fixed by God Himself. Faced with his father’s refusal, Don Luis dares do nothing, but the fear in his eyes becomes more striking.
III
Fortresses of Deceit
VERSAILLES, JUNE–JULY 1722
Reclining in the Hall of Mirrors
It wasn’t Louis XV himself who made the decision to leave the Tuileries Palace, and it wasn’t the regent either, as he feels nothing but aversion to Versailles; it was, once again, Cardinal Dubois’s idea. Not that this hardworking, sly commoner feels any particular sympathy for the palace and the life of the court; for him the move is part of a political initiative, an initiative with the specific purpose of allaying the government’s growing unpopularity and silencing the talk about how the regent’s immorality is likely to influence the king. Moving back to Versailles is also a way of rallying part of the nobility of the old court. Louis cares nothing for any of this; he’s simply delighted to return to Versailles, which he left at the age of five, as we know, under lugubrious circumstances. Does he hope to find there some trace of the time before everything came apart? Does he hope to tear away the mourning veil that covers everything he touches? In any case, he’s impatient. “Trifles, trifles!” he replies to M. de Villeroy’s objection that work on the palace has not yet been completed. On the day of his departure from the Tuileries, the young boy is jubilant. Dressed in bright pink stockings and an apple-green outfit, he belongs to the spring. He’s so charming and supple, he strolls about with so much grace, that perhaps it’s not the wily Dubois but rather the elves and fairies — inside the hollow trunks of scattered trees, in the sainfoin’s warmth and the palaces of moss, on the water-lily islands — who after many a moonlit confab have come to the conclusion that the passage of seven years means the evil spell has been broken.
“The King’s departure for his Palace at Versailles having been fixed for the fifteenth day of this month,” the Gazette tells us,
His Majesty set out today at around three o’clock in the afternoon. The King was accompanied in his coach by the Duke d’Orléans, the Duke de Chartres, the Duke de Bourbon, the Count de Clermont, and Marshal de Villeroy. His Majesty arrived here at approximately five-thirty, to be greeted by vociferous acclamations from the people, who filled the avenues of the Palace. He dismounted from the carriage and entered the Chapel, where he said a prayer, and then he went up to his apartments. After having remained there for some time, he went down into the gardens, where he walked until eight in the evening.
Will His Majesty return to Paris for the coming winter? Is this a definitive departure? The king doesn’t have the answer. And his entourage waits to see how the boy is going to acclimate himself, or reacclimate himself, to Versailles. All along the route, starting with the wooded avenue of the Champs-Elysées, the king responded joyfully to the public’s acclamations. Exceptional behavior on his part. Usually, when faced with a jubilant crowd, his first movement is to hide himself. (Right after his recovery from an illness during the summer of 1720, when he was ten years old, the Parisians thronged the gardens of the Tuileries Palace, shouting out their joy: “Long live the king! Long live the king! Long live the king!” This outpouring of love sent the terrorized boy running from one room to another, trying to escape his subjects. His tutor brought him back to the window by force, whereupon the people’s shouts of Vive le roi!, and the little king’s panic, were redoubled.) The women of La Halle, with their obscene jokes, especially horrify him. But on the day of his return to Versailles, people can approach him, sing, shout, applaud him from the rooftops or the upper branches of trees; nothing frightens him. Children adorned with blue and white ribbons cheer his passage.
In the park at Versailles, Louis XV dashes off to the copses, the fountains, the paths; he wants to see the statues again, and the grottoes, and the labyrinth, and behind him he drags his noble entourage, already fairly worn out by the trip. It’s hot, and none of those personages, with the exception of the Count de Clermont, M. le Duc’s brother and not much older than Louis, is capable of matching his pace. The two boys far outstrip the others, running off in all directions, hopping over the little streams. In their wake, panting, perspiring, carrying canes and wearing wigs, the small group of worthy gentlemen make what haste they can. They put on smiling faces — it’s a fine day, they must reflect it; the king is happy, therefore they are too — even though they’re on the verge of fainting. At last the torture comes to an end. From the Fountain of Apollo, the king turns back to the palace, heading for the Hall of Mirrors, and there, oh joy, he stretches out on the floor and orders his tutor, the elderly M. de Villeroy, who’s more dead than alive, to tell him the stories depicted on the painted ceiling. M. de Villeroy requests an armchair and a pause to catch his breath. Around him the gentlemen sit on the floor; someone inquires about the possibility of being served some lemonade. The brand-new crimson taffeta curtains are drawn aside and the windows opened to facilitate breathing and let in more of the light from the setting sun. The narrative can begin.
They’re in the Hall of Mirrors, lying flat on the floor or propped up on their arms with their heads tilted back. Together with the boy-king, they listen to the marshal, the Duke de Villeroy, as the old man explains the paintings above them. Each is by Le Brun, and each commemorates a victory. M. de Villeroy recounts the Sun King’s life of wars and triumphs. Sometimes his voice breaks, for while he’s enunciating the emphatic words in the ceremonial tone he always adopts, bits of conversation with Louis XIV, images of him at different ages and in contrasting moods, come back to him. Little by little, because of the marshal’s irresistible fatigue, those portraits of the king in armor and on horseback, eternally young and triumphant, like an Olympian god, are overlaid in Villeroy’s mind by the insistent, terrible vision of the old monarch as he was in his final appearances, mortally wounded by grief and disease. The ceiling doubtless sang of his victories, but the ruler himself, down there on the floor, with his toothless mouth and gouty limbs and yellowish skin, was nothing but a cripple, a dying man pushed about in a “rolling chair.” Louis XV hears nothing but the victory song. He trembles with pleasure as the saga unfolds. Apart from the keepers of the taverns along the route and the merchants and hoteliers of Versailles, no one’s as pleased as he is.
For the great nobles of the kingdom, for those closest to him, those reclining on the parquetry, this is not necessarily a good moment. As for the wider circle of courtiers, they’re going to have to resume their double existence, shared between Versailles and Paris, or Versailles and their châteaus in the provinces. That will require time and money. Everyone knows that paying court is the quickest way to obtain protection, privileges, employment, on condition of winning the king’s confidence and finding the way to please him. However subtle one’s maneuverings may be, success depends on an unpredictable element: the prince’s pleasure. So much so that in the final analysis, the courtiers are in the same boa
t as the gamblers who devote all their intelligence to working out strategies and figuring combinations when the final outcome is a matter of chance.
M. de Villeroy discourses upon the central fresco, which depicts Louis XIV’s assumption of personal power. The boy smiles delightedly. He’s certain that the monarch who called himself “the greatest king in the world” knew how to assume power and how to keep it. The noblemen sigh. In their rumpled coats and dusty perukes, with their shirts sticking to their skin and the sweat running under their wigs, dying to scratch themselves, dreaming of being so bold as to kick off their tormenting shoes, they endure the golden legend. Each of them keeps to himself his mixed feelings, his own memories of the great king, and his expectations from the new one, so young, laughing and wriggling his legs as if physically tickled by the rays of light that emanate from his painted ancestor, fall gently upon him, and encompass him in single splendor.
For the rest of the listeners, it’s aching backs, stiff necks, and bitter deglutition, hardly sweetened at all by the lemonade.
Marshal de Villeroy waxes enthusiastic. The mythical reign is on display everywhere. For Louis XIV, the dimensions of human glory could not suffice; he required the gods of Mt. Olympus. M. de Villeroy leads his audience to the painting by Jean Nocret in which all the members of the royal family are depicted as ancient deities: Anne of Austria is Cybele, mother of the gods; the king is Apollo, laurel-crowned and bare-chested, draped in golden fabric and exhibiting his scepter; his wife, Queen Maria Theresa, is Juno; on the extreme left side of the large canvas, Monsieur, the king’s brother, also bare-chested and draped in an ample, cream-colored cotton cloth, holds the morning star in one hand and with the other caresses one of the several daughters born of his first marriage.
The Exchange of Princesses Page 12
