The Exchange of Princesses

by Chantal Thomas

  The king is handsome, elegant, attentive, clever; he promises to become an excellent horseman. To say nothing of his religion: he’s the Most Christian king, and she, the queen, accompanies him with fervor. “Her love for the King only continues to grow,” writes Mme de Ventadour.

  As instructed, the royal pair have revived the ritual of traversing the Hall of Mirrors on their way to the royal chapel: “All those who saw her with the King, as he took her hand for the entire length of the gallery, were in ecstasy” (Mme de Ventadour). The courtiers on both sides make their bows. The “charming couple,” as Cardinal Dubois refers to them, delight the spectators. And those who remember Louis XIV’s remark about the severe geometry of Le Nôtre’s gardens — “They lack childhood” — can believe that Versailles, with a twelve-year-old king and a four-year-old queen, is going to be rejuvenated, that the stone walls will be replaced by an intangible softness: the down of childhood …

  The king and queen of Spain are depicted in two portraits that hang by the entrance to the chapel. The infanta bows and crosses herself before each of them. She blows them kisses and makes “little loving gestures.” She does the same with the statues in the park, which look as bare to her as French religious statues. (Spanish religious statues, by contrast, are covered with precious fabrics and bedecked with jewels.)

  If the promenade through the Hall of Mirrors is one of the infanta’s delights, religious services in the chapel, all white marble and gold and flowers, are pure elation. In the royal tribune, their prie-dieux touch; angelic voices soar; the dove hovers. Peeking between her white-gloved fingers, Mariana Victoria checks to make sure that the king hasn’t flown away with the Holy Spirit.

  July is delicious. The exploration of the palace and its park takes up most of the infanta’s time. In certain rooms the floors need to be redone, and there are several broken windows. A number of lowly and destitute people have taken refuge in the attics, while others more insolent than they have settled into princely ground-floor apartments. These squatters are the first to be chased out by the army of floor polishers who flood the whole palace with wax. Other guests will perhaps never be spotted, like the family of white owls nesting in a study. Outside, the grass has grown randomly. The perimeters of the lawns have disappeared, absorbed into large meadows. With a resolute gesture, she tosses the wide-brimmed hat meant to protect her head onto the greenery and starts picking poppies. It’s as if the park has been transformed according to Madame’s wishes, as if her lesson on wildflowers created this new landscape. Alas, Madame’s health is in decline. She’s often obliged to cancel visits. Instead of the dear lady herself, Mariana Victoria receives a basket of cherries. She eats them sadly. When she doesn’t have the heart to eat them, she wears four of them as earrings.

  One stormy afternoon, Madame reappears. She’s far from being as exuberant as her dogs, but she has enough energy to carry off the infanta in the direction of the Trianon. The little girl congratulates her on the return of her health, whereupon Madame replies, “Thank God, I was able to neutralize my doctors’ initiatives, otherwise I would be dead. I told them a long time ago: ‘My health and my body are mine, so I intend to govern them as I please.’ ”

  “They obeyed you?”

  “They obeyed me. And you too, my dear child, you must never forget that: your health and your body are your own …”

  “… so I intend to govern them as I please. I am queen of France, and of my body.”

  The Princess Palatine stays for supper. No tutors, under-tutors, preceptors, masters of ceremonies, or experts in good manners are at the party. Madame eats — like King Louis XIV, she recalls — with her fingers and a knife. It’s much better to touch your food. She has no patience with affected people who show off by using forks. The infanta plunges both hands into her green pea puree.

  Fetid Dampness

  When they’re away from bad influences like the Princess Palatine, the boy-king and the queen-infanta handle their forks perfectly well. Sometimes they take their meals in public. They perform as successfully at table as they do in church or in the passage through the Hall of Mirrors. Louis XV and Mariana Victoria are little model persons, perfections in miniature.

  Our King tires everyone but is never tired himself. He is growing and gaining weight at the same time. I do not believe that there is a countenance in the world more agreeable than his, without any trace of complacency. We shall have a King and a Queen worthy of their subjects’ admiration. When your dear child was at table yesterday, there was a large crowd of people come to see her eat. She said, “It is hot, but I prefer to have this trouble and let myself be seen by all my people.” Her words filled everyone with joy.

  P.S. from the Queen: The King my husband thanks you and my dear papa for all your kind words in maman Ventadour’s letter; he said so in front of me and I am happy to know it, for I feel for my dear papa and my dear maman infinite affection.

  Mariana Victoria

  The infanta charms all with her good humor and her rejoinders. For example, when the Portuguese ambassador, having inquired about her health, asks her if “she finds France and Versailles more beautiful than Madrid,” she replies, “It was very hard for me to part from my father and my mother, but I am delighted to be queen of France.” Her intelligence, it’s said, verges on the prodigious. People admire, they go into raptures. And what if it’s all too much, what if she’s too intelligent to survive? People laugh, they applaud her, but they whisper to one another a prediction by Nostradamus:

  A little after the match is made,

  Before the day is solemnized,

  The Emperor shall all disturb,

  And the fair new bride,

  By fate linked to the land of France,

  A little thereafter shall die.

  Under the pried-up floorboards, in the empty armoires, the shadowy corridors, the uninhabited children’s rooms, the cradles of agony, Death is lurking. The “new bride” sometimes cries in her sleep and has inexplicable bouts of fever. She wraps her dolls in shrouds and lines them up in the Salon de la Paix, the Peace Room.

  Returning from a rabbit hunt, the king catches cold. His stockings are soaked, but he’s so accustomed to being dressed, undressed, and served on all occasions that he says nothing, despite his gelid feet.

  On another day, he faints at the Mass.

  The infanta turns pale, would like to take him in her arms.

  The rumors about Versailles’s bad air come back, the talk about the miasmas, about the multifarious corruptions fostered in that former marsh.

  The infanta is thought to be too intelligent to live long, the king too handsome to keep his virginity for any length of time. Louis XV is the object of seductive maneuverings by persons of both sexes, who plot to gain power over him through the enchantment of sensual pleasure. While still in the Tuileries, the young boy sometimes had the surprise of seeing extraordinarily beautiful young girls — peasants, princesses, sultanas — emerge from the half-light of an adjacent room and cross, as if by chance, his field of vision … Such apparitions were sometimes staged to give them an air of verisimilitude, as when two shepherdesses, one blond and one brunette, exquisitely got up and partially naked, burst onto the royal pall-mall course in pursuit of a sheep. Play was stopped by the shiver of desire that ran through all the players except the king, who was vexed because a sheep had dared to disturb his game. The plots to make him succumb to feminine charms were all the more relentless in that the would-be seductresses were counterattacking a very solid offensive position held by a small group of nobles in the king’s inner circle, young men certain that their efforts to ensnare his royal and virginal body would succeed because of his implicit consent, his vague collusion in his own exploitation. According to hearsay, which for the moment had not spread beyond the court, Louis XV seemed uniquely susceptible to masculine charms, to the beauty, reflecting his own, of companions little older than he. According to the custom established for future kings of France, at the age of s
even he had “passed to the men,” that is, he’d been snatched from Maman Ventadour’s hands and given over to an entourage of tutors and instructors, all of them men. The question was, had that passage been definitive? The doubts and suspicions were confined to a small group. It was essential that nothing be disclosed for however long it took to correct the king’s tendencies. But what remained unnoticed in the Tuileries is on display at Versailles and provokes public condemnation.

  They bear great names and have quite naturally been designated as the king’s favorites. They are the Duke de Boufflers, the Duke d’Épernon, the Duke de Gesvres, the Marquis de Meuse, the Count de Ligny, the Marquis de Rambure, and M. d’Alincourt, the Marshal de Villeroy’s grandson … Most of them are married, no older than twenty, fond of laughing, and inclined to find forbidden caresses and furtive bonks in convenient corners of the palace more exciting than conjugal embraces. They surround the king, gain access to his chamber, sneak into his closet, where they caress him, guide his hand, and set about teaching him to come without concern for women or pregnancies. Their words are surreptitious, semen-stained.

  The king’s wearing nothing but a white satin dressing gown and long stockings. M. d’Alincourt takes Louis’s sex in his black-gloved hand, on which several rings are sparkling. He makes the boy moan and slide softly against him. The very pretty Charles Armand René, Duke de la Trémoille, sixteen years old, first gentleman of the king’s bedchamber, observes the scene from the stool he’s sitting on. He too is breathing heavily, his hands are likewise trembling. On his knees is his interrupted embroidery work. He’s not jealous; the king’s progress along the path to pederasty should turn to his advantage. At the moment of orgasm, he swallows one after another three round fruit pastes drenched in pear liqueur.

  It’s hot. The fetid dampness their elders find so trying suits the favorites. It makes them feel like embracing, biting one another, frolicking naked in the copses. Night after night they gather in the darkness and fornicate under the statues of Diana the Huntress in her short chiton and Louis XIV in his armor. The park belongs to them. They have the audacity of the satyrs. The garden side of the palace isn’t enough; they venture into the guarded areas near the big gates and even into the Marble Court, where they wind up under the Duke and Duchess of Boufflers’s windows. Awakened by the noise, the couple go to the nearest window and discover their own son with his ass in the air, trampling on all the laws of propriety and offering himself to the young Marquis de Rambure. Other windows are flung open, and the light of the full moon catches the joyful group in flagrante delicto of the vilest sort, on the very ground where Molière, during the previous reign, produced his comedies. The king, God be thanked, is sound asleep.

  The young libertines are severely berated. Some of them get sent to the Bastille, others exiled by lettres de cachet requested by their families. In Paris, the jokes and gibes proliferate. Louis XV is surprised that he no longer has about him some of his most entertaining friends. The explanation he’s given is that they’ve been punished for wrecking fences on the grounds of the palace. The notion of “fence-wreckers” enjoys a good success both among the courtiers and beyond the court. The king accepts it without comment. Perhaps it’s the gentle Duke de la Trémoille who undertakes to explain the expression to him. He may even clarify the various positions for the king by embroidering the scene into one of the idyllic landscapes he’s working on.

  However that may be, shortly after the scandal of the fence-wreckers, and in conjunction with it — though the king doesn’t know it — he becomes aware of a new disappearance that touches the very core of his existence: the Marshal de Villeroy, his tutor, is gone, he who was appointed by Louis XIV and never left the young king’s side, neither by day nor by night, convinced as he was that his little charge might suddenly die, poisoned like his parents. For Villeroy, the enemy was Philip d’Orléans, who reciprocated the sentiment, as we’ve seen. The regent detested Villeroy. The limit was reached when Villeroy tried to prohibit private meetings between the uncle and his nephew; Villeroy had overstepped his prerogatives. But the regent couldn’t simply relieve him of his duties; he needed a pretext. The fence-wreckers furnished him with one, thanks to the presence among them of the marshal’s grandson.

  Everything happens very fast. One afternoon, M. de Villeroy is carried in a sedan chair to the regent’s study, which opens onto the gardens. After an unpleasant exchange, he gets back into his chair, but the porters, instead of returning him to his apartments, charge off in the direction of the Satory pond. They pass under the queen-infanta’s windows and run along the Aile du Midi, and soon the old tutor finds himself inside a carriage, all doors bolted, all curtains down, being whisked away at a gallop into exile.

  The king watches for M. de Villeroy’s return. He sends people to look for him. Hours pass. M. de Villeroy cannot be found. The king goes into a panic. Without M. de Villeroy’s protection, he’s going to die. The very air he breathes seems baleful. When night falls, his fear grows uncontrollable. He begs for his dear tutor, “Grandpa Villeroy,” to be returned to him. The presence of the regent, who has hurried to his bedside to reassure him, increases his terror. The boy has a hallucinatory vision of the poison’s icy path through his body. He believes he’s dying, even believes himself already dead. He continues to act and to be treated like a living person, whereas he’s been poisoned to the marrow of his bones and has departed this life — like his great-grandfather, he sobs, like the dead man who addressed him and promised him he’d become a great king, and now he’s dead in his turn, without having had the time to become anything.

  Two days later, when M. de Villeroy’s replacement Bishop André Hercule de Fleury arrives, the boy stops eating, won’t drink, avoids touching papers or letters addressed to him, is wary of breathing the scent of flowers and indeed of breathing at all … In his imagination, he dies dozens of times. The elegant prelate, a man of great gentleness already familiar to the young king, strives to save him from his nightmares. In Paris, word circulates that “the King appears cheerful enough in public, but in private he is sad and given to complaining and weeping at night.”

  SPAIN, SUMMER 1722

  “Saint Ildephonse”

  The heat and the difficulty of tolerating the stench of Madrid, which permeates even the park of the Buen Retiro Palace, have induced Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese to relocate to a cooler climate. They’re at Valsaín, in a hunting pavilion in the middle of the forest, chosen by Philip V for its proximity to the chief subject of his thoughts and the single outlet for his energy: the royal property known as La Granja de San Ildefonso — or “Saint Ildephonse,” as he calls it in his correspondence, in a Gallicized spelling indicative of his expectations for the palace (including a church) he’s building there. Philip V and his wife supervise the work from Valsaín. They have themselves transported to the site every day, climbing up the cedar-lined path that opens onto the foundations of the church. It will be magnificent, the jewel of his secret dream: to pray to God under the richly decorated ceiling, surrounded by frescoes of angels and glistening marble; and outside, to go upon the rocky, piney slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama. And between the two? Between the Lord’s glorious temple and barren nature? There will be the royal palace of San Ildefonso. Out of pure nostalgia, King Philip has modeled his conception on Versailles. He inspects the terrain and chooses the locations of the fountains of Diana, Latona, and Apollo; there will be rectilinear paths and statues of giant turtles identical to the ones he used to sit on as a boy. He pressures, hounds, verifies. His impatience delights no one close to him, especially not, for different reasons, the queen and Don Luis.

  The Gazette offers some royal news: “On the 8th day of this month, the King and Queen are due to return from their château at Balsain [sic] to El Escorial, where the Prince and Princess of Asturias and the Infantes are expected on the 6th.” Some days later, a notice informs the readers that the king and queen have changed the date of their return. They’re goin
g to stay longer at Valsaín. The decision has been made by the king, who wants to be there to accelerate the work on his new palace. The queen is discovering a bad side to her symbiosis with the king: his obsession with his rustic retreat. Nevertheless, in her view, delaying the start of their sojourn at El Escorial is not a disagreeable prospect, at least not for the foreseeable future. She feels no attraction to that monastery/palace, and despite her efforts to introduce comfort and decoration in the wing they live in, she doesn’t like it there. Besides, the more time she spends away from her daughter-in-law the better, because the girl’s company is nothing short of unbearable.

  Louise Élisabeth doesn’t dance with her husband or anyone else, nor has she developed any interest in hunting, nor does she even pretend to like music. Thus she absents herself from all three main activities of the royal family. “The Goiter Girl” has nothing in common with them. After barely six months, has she withdrawn from life at court, ignored the regular daily schedule, eschewed the seasonal relocations from one palace to another? Not yet, but she’s getting there, she’s well along the way. The bridges between the crown of Spain and the lost waif are fragile structures, but they’re not down. They can’t be, because the project that’s her reason for being there — namely her marriage to the Prince of Asturias and the royal offspring she’s expected to produce — is still in its early stages. The official messages lean toward the effusive. The good Father de Laubrussel writes to Cardinal Dubois:

  In carrying out Your Eminence’s instructions to the very letter, I shall not find it necessary to weary you with a long and detailed report, for nothing is less subject to diversity than Her Highness the Princess of Asturias’s style of living; everything in that regard is so well ordered and her hours so well divided that no gaps remain … It has hardly cost her more effort to learn the language of the country than to breathe its air, and I have heard her speak to her ladies-in-waiting as if she had never lived anywhere but Spain … The King, the Queen, and the Prince continue to cherish her dearly, and she knows too well where her true interests and her duties lie to do aught but preserve so precious a treasure.