At the end of the long short story of her love, she has come up against that realization. She has yielded to the evidence and pronounced the words that break her heart.
It has been decided that she will be sent back. It’s only a matter of weeks. M. le Duc uses the king’s illness to ensure that the decision goes into effect as soon as possible. The king has declared that he has no wish to marry again. No one gainsays him, but the search for a bride is launched.
M. le Duc attempts to place his sister, Mlle de Sens, but she’s refused, allegedly because it would be unseemly for a king to marry one of his subjects. Mlle de Sens’s candidacy is withdrawn, and research into the advantages and disadvantages of various other candidates begins. Religion? An heiress of what royal house? Fortune? Age? Princess Amélie, the Princess of England, the Princess of Lorraine, the Princess of Prussia? A big girl, that last one, ten and a half years old. “No, in truth,” repeats the king. “I do not wish to marry so soon.” Princess Stanislas, the infanta of Portugal, some German princess?
A letter is written in the name of the king, a document full of circumlocutions and diplomacy, wherein he describes the profound sorrow that the necessity of separating from the queen-infanta causes him. The king signs the letter. M. le Duc is triumphant. The chamber where the King’s Council meets is abuzz with expressions of satisfaction. The king retains his absent air. He makes no response to the Duke d’Orléans, who bitterly observes, “Thus all that my father envisioned will be destroyed.” Inside the four walls of his room, Saint-Simon sees things the same way. He who was the architect of two decisive matrimonial unions and dreamed of obtaining an important post in Versailles or Madrid is definitively dismissed, sent away to live only in preparing his Memoirs, in dancing with his ghosts.
MADRID, BEGINNING OF MARCH 1725
It’s late in the morning. The king and the queen are in bed. She’s bending over her embroidery, he’s saying his rosary. The infantes are being dressed to visit their parents. Somewhere in the palace, musicians are rehearsing for this evening’s concert. The queen sings as she embroiders. They receive a letter and peruse it together. The king looks appalled, the queen mad with fury. They reread. The queen rushes to her cabinet, yanks out drawers, hurls the bundles of letters they’ve received from France since their daughter’s departure to the floor. She jumps up and down on the letters, spurning them underfoot. Then she reads some passages at the top of her voice. She cries treason, insults France and the French. She says to Philip V, “Expel all the French who live in Spain. Expel them at once.”
“But in that case, Madame, I should have to leave the kingdom first.”
VERSAILLES, BEGINNING OF MARCH 1725
Mme de Ventadour’s anguish is so vehement that she is willing to do anything to escape the infanta’s questions. She’s afraid her Mariannine will be able to guess what’s in store for her from her governess’s sorrowful face. The duchess offers pretexts: migraine headache, bad fever, gambling losses. In the cafés of Paris and the provinces, gossipmongers incapable of holding their tongues on the subject of the infanta’s dismissal and its consequences are arrested. The law of silence that reigns over Versailles is extended to the whole country. The image of an adorable infanta cracks. It’s replaced by caricatures formed — or rather deformed — in the minds of her enemies. The lawyer Mathieu Marais, who was in the beginning totally conquered by the infanta, now writes these lines:
In truth, she is too young (turns seven on March 31); she is small and grows not an inch a year; she is knotted up in her loins and unfit for bearing children, and neither her little graces nor her charming wit will serve for aught in that work.
MADRID, MID-MARCH 1725
The king of Spain attends to preparations for fighting a war against the country of his birth. He’s contemplating yet another fratricidal war. In dread, in horror, in the most complete dejection.
VERSAILLES, MID-MARCH 1725
Torrential rain showers are inundating the Île-de-France. Louis XV attends Mass, leaves after hearing the sermon, and departs for Marly on horseback. As the king zigzags to avoid puddles, the valet holding the umbrella over his head has difficulty keeping up with him. The king seems to be running because of the rain, but in fact he’s running away. He’s running away from the infanta. He dreads a final interview with her. M. le Duc has taken the initiative of offering the king this sojourn at Marly so that he may avoid the chore of a farewell.
MADRID, END OF MARCH 1725
Philip V abandons the project of a war that would be, for his already sufficiently tortured soul, the equivalent of launching his own armies against himself. The queen must be satisfied with the expulsion of Louise Élisabeth. And it really does satisfy her. As her detested daughter-in-law’s departure date, she selects the birthday of one of her sons. The young widow takes her leave, accompanied (according to the Gazette)
by the Duchess de Montellano, her Camarera Mayor, and by the Marquis de Valero, President of the Council of the Indies, Lord Chamberlain, and in his quality of Majordomo of the Royal Palace, Commander of the detachment of Officers of the Royal Household, which has been commanded to accompany the Princess to the frontier of the Kingdom. On the same day, the 15th, there was a celebration at the Palace in honor of the birth of the Infante Don Felipe, who entered that day upon his sixth year … On this occasion, the Ministers and the Grandees of the Kingdom had the honor of kissing the hands of the King and the Queen; after which the Bailiff Don Pedro de Ávila, Ambassador of the Knights of Malta to this Court, presented to His Majesty, on behalf of the Grand Master, several birds of prey … and to the Queen, a bouquet of gold and silver filigree, worked with all imaginable delicacy. (Madrid, March 20, 1725)
Elisabeth Farnese radiates satisfaction.
The “bundle of dirty linen” is packed off to the joyous sounds of a celebration. In fine weather and in the opposite direction, Louise Élisabeth retraces the disastrous winter journey that brought her to Spain. She’d been ill then, and she hadn’t seen anything. Nor does she this time. She’s not unwell in body, but a voice lodged inside her head, between her ears, makes suggestions she doesn’t especially like, tormenting suggestions that nevertheless demand to be followed: “Look at that little stream on your left, look at how swift and clear it is, go on and dive in, it will refresh you, little sloven. Make them stop the carriage, take off your clothes, and jump in the water, go on, poor girl, poor dowager!”
Louise Élisabeth tucks up her dress and pulls at a garter. The Duchess de Montellano, assisted by a companion, subdues her.
VERSAILLES, END OF MARCH 1725
The infanta struggles through the suffocating atmosphere around her. Nobody dares to face her. Mme de Ventadour weeps incessantly and remains shut up in her apartment. She writes to Madrid:
For my part, Madame, the death of my grandchildren would cost me a thousand times less grief than the separation from my Queen. That is what she will always be to me, and my God! Madame, since Louis XIV’s death, how many revolutions have we not seen, and there will be more to come! God’s hand is heavy upon us. It is a great upheaval for this realm, that for the present your dear child is to be removed from us. Madame, our King is in no state to recognize his loss, and there are a great many things which one cannot hold against him. As I have the honor to write to a royal couple of signal devotion, I need not say anything to you about submission to the will of God.
The infanta’s ladies-in-waiting and other companions are afraid of letting the truth out in her presence. People avoid the infanta. Her apartments are deserted. For those desirous of the king’s favor — and who isn’t? — calling on the child to kiss her small hand has become a proscribed act. The courtiers try to stay out of the little girl’s way, they no longer pet her little dogs, no longer flatter her dolls, no longer fight to play a game of blindman’s buff or la queue du loup (the wolf’s tail) with her; they no longer maneuver to determine who will have the honor of pushing her little swing or harnessing white mice to her
silver coach. They tread on the paper figurines she so assiduously cuts out with her embroidery scissors. Carmen-Doll has stuck an organdy gag over her raspberry mouth. A lady-in-waiting gives her a tip: the gags being worn this spring are of felt, in dark colors.
The infanta doesn’t grow, and she’s getting thinner. She’s lost her appetite for food as well as life. One day, Bébé IV, her sole remaining companion, shows her a plate of crêmes frites with an apricot coulis. They look good, he tells her, and they must be eaten hot — would Her Majesty like to try one?
“Oh!” she says, pointing to her mouth. “When you’ve had it up to here, you can’t eat.”
A Spaniard from the embassy attends one of the infanta’s suppers. He tells her that her mother and father are saddened by the passage of so many years without their daughter and would love to see her again.
“How do you know?”
He takes out a sheet of paper and reads it by the firelight. It’s news from Spain; it reports that the king and queen are going to visit their kingdom, that they will come very near Bayonne, and that, since they will be at the French border, they would love to kiss the infanta. “Will Your Majesty agree to go?” asks the Spaniard.
The infanta senses some confusion. Why is this man, whom she barely knows, the one proposing this journey? Why isn’t it Maman Ventadour? Maman Ventadour is not the same as she once was. It’s as though she were in hiding, or hiding something … But of course Mariana Victoria accepts, she misses her parents and her brothers. Besides, from the way the matter is presented, it sounds like only a brief sojourn. She says, “Yes, it would be a great pleasure for me to see them, too,” but she doesn’t feel any pleasure. And having said those words, in which she’s heard the click of the trap closing on her, she leaves the supper table. Carmen-Doll withdraws to work on the great gathering of dolls. At Versailles, even if the majority of the dolls normally live in the queen-infanta’s apartments, that doesn’t stop some of them from nosing around outside their territory. It’s possible to come across one mixing with the riffraff in the kitchens of the Grand Commons or outside the Little Stables. Carmen-Doll works fast. She sends messengers to all the palaces where the infanta has stayed. At Fontainebleau, the forgotten dolls have already been put under covers. By bribing the official in charge of furniture storage, the infanta achieves their liberation.
Carmen-Doll is relentless in making sure that not a single one of the infanta’s dolls remains on French soil. The dolls shut up in the trunk can’t believe their good fortune. They exercise discretion. The important thing is to be included in the baggage.
BURGOS, APRIL 1725
Louise Élisabeth is counting the days. The palace she’s been relegated to resembles a prison. Perhaps it’s her last accommodations. She’s not authorized to go about in Burgos, and in any case the notion wouldn’t occur to her. She eats everything she can, becomes fat and soft. A perpetual expression of alarm causes people to take her for an imbecile. The dowager queen, her rare visitors say, “has no more resolution than a seven-year-old child,” whereas the infanta, seven years old herself, continues to surprise those around her with observations worthy of a young woman of eighteen or twenty. Not that this plays to her advantage; it’s interpreted as a slightly monstrous anomaly. Deficient or too precocious, too fat or too thin, weak-willed or too decisive, already worn out or too young, henceforth neither the one nor the other can ever please.
When the order is finally given for her departure for France, Louise Élisabeth is not reassured. How will things be on the other side? How will she be treated? “Badly, very badly,” the atonal, metallic voice replies for her, the soft and maniacal voice of her madness. “Do you really want to know any more about it, piece of trash, putrid little tramp? Well, suppose you start by washing a few handkerchiefs, and then I shall see …” Lying abed in the middle of the day with her head under a blanket, Louise Élisabeth escapes. It’s not that she doesn’t have the strength to fight, it’s that she has no strength at all, neither to resist nor to obey. She has no energy for anything, not even her caprices.
During the trip, she keeps the curtains down and doesn’t seem to recognize her entourage. She’s a package easily forwarded.
VERSAILLES, APRIL 5, 1725
It’s early in the morning. The Sun Palace is outlined against a cold light. The shutters are still closed on most of the apartments of the great château. Mme de Ventadour, desolated with sorrow, hardly shows herself. It’s obvious that the infanta has her doubts about her parents’ alleged request. It had been thought that drowsiness would help to soften the violence of the departure, but she’s thoroughly alert, as is her habit. She considers what’s around her attentively and precisely, as if while looking she were already beginning to remember. Her vivaciousness makes people ill at ease. The farewells and the plans for her near return ring false. She contains herself and pretends to believe. At the moment when she climbs up into the carriage, she doesn’t even ask where the king is. Great infanta.
AT THE BORDER, MID-MAY 1725
Once again they meet, headed in opposite directions. When they cross over the border, they do not kiss. The original exchange is made in reverse. The dowager queen of Spain for the queen-infanta of France. A half-mad teenager for a deposed child.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
All the extracts from correspondence quoted in this book are authentic. The letters or excerpts from letters written by Elisabeth Farnese, Luis I, Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Mariana Victoria de Borbón, Philip V, and Madame de Ventadour are mainly to be found in the Historical Archive in Madrid and are, for the most part, unpublished.
Press extracts are drawn from the Gazette, which after 1762 was called the Gazette de France.
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Mariana Victoria de Borbón, in French Marie Anne Victoire, infanta of Spain, known after her marriage to Louis XV as the queen-infanta of France. She was born on March 31, 1718. Eventually, in 1729, she married the Prince of Brazil, who later ascended the throne of Portugal as José I, and with whom she had four daughters. Her husband being ill, she assumed the regency of that country from 1776 until her death in 1781. She was Marie Antoinette’s godmother.
Louis XV, king of France. Born at Versailles on February 15, 1710. After his marriage to Mariana Victoria was annulled, in September 1725 he married Marie Lesczynska (she was seven years older than Louis, the queen-infanta had been seven years younger, balance was restored!). Eleven children were born of this union. Louis XV died on May 10, 1774, at Versailles, after a reign of nearly sixty years.
Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Mlle de Montpensier, Princess of Asturias after her marriage in 1722 to Don Luis, Prince of Asturias, and then queen of Spain — Reina Luisa Isabel de Orléans. She was born at Versailles on December 11, 1709, and died in Paris on June 16, 1742, completely neglected. She became dowager queen of Spain at the age of fifteen and never remarried.
Don Luis, Prince of Asturias, then king of Spain as Luis I. His reign lasted seven and a half months. He was born on August 25, 1707, and died in Madrid on August 31, 1724, at the age of seventeen. His tomb is in El Escorial.
CHANTAL THOMAS is a noted philosopher and writer. She has taught at a number of American universities and is the author of twenty-five works, including novels, histories, short stories, plays, and essays. Her internationally acclaimed novel Farewell, My Queen, a fictional account of Marie Antoinette’s final days in Versailles, won the Prix Femina in 2002 and was made into an award-winning film by Benoit Jacquot, and starred Diane Kruger. A film adaptation of The Exchange of Princesses, to be directed by Marc Dugain, is currently in the works.
JOHN CULLEN is the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck, Juli Zeh’s Decompression, Yasmina Reza’s Happy Are the Happy, and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. He lives in upstate New York.
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