The Cat and the King (3 page)

“But of course I see that, dear!” Gabrielle exclaimed with sudden warmth. “I
want
to believe in the things you believe in. It's just that I have to understand them first. My father, you see, taught me that the king was everything.”

“The king is a great deal,” I conceded. “But he is not everything. And he shouldn't wish to be. And if he would only listen to his peers and not to his middle-class lawyer-ministers, he wouldn't!”

We saw now approaching us a cortege of courtiers following the great wheeled sedan-chair of Madame de Maintenon, drawn by two porters. Walking slowly beside it was the king himself. He was showing his wife the latest changes in the garden. When he raised his hand, an usher would tell the porters to halt. He would then tap on the glass, which the occupant would lower, and he would lean down to explain the removal of a statue or the creation of a fountain. It was remarkable to see the mightiest monarch in Christendom stooping to whisper his views through a slit in the window to a lady who was probably not even listening.

“Let us join the group,” Gabrielle whispered to me. “It doesn't look well to be so apart.”

***

Little by little Gabrielle came to be acquainted with the persons whose names and ranks she had so carefully conned. I took her one morning to call on the king's oldest bastard daughter by the Montespan, the duchesse de Bourbon, known in court as “Madame la Duchesse,” in her great apartment in the south wing. Madame la Duchesse was certainly not a particular friend of mine, but she was intimate with her husband's brother-in-law, the prince de Conti, my hero, and I cultivated her for his sake.

“I certainly congratulate you on your choice, Monsieur de Saint-Simon!” the duchess said, snapping her dark, mocking eyes at Gabrielle. “We had no idea that you had an eye so sensitive to pulchritude. We feared you might bring us some little brown bride from the provinces and tell us that she was descended from Julius Caesar. But this is better. Oh, this is very fine!”

Madame la Duchesse had inherited the Mortemart liveliness from her mother. She was small and dark-haired and tense, with jet-black eyes that seemed to pierce every shield, every bluff. She said harsh and witty things in a charming way, and she never seemed to lose her temper. She was supposed to be heartless, but never wantonly unkind. She would stab you in the back only if she had to.

“Do you ever miss the convent, my dear?” she asked Gabrielle, with a smile that made her question a spoof.

“I wish I could say I did,” my wife replied gravely. I was beginning to learn that Gabrielle was never shy, simply muted. “It might indicate a state of grace.”

“We come to court from the convent, and some of us return. Mademoiselle de la Vallière returned.”

“What was left for her, when she lost your father's favor?”

“Very prettily replied. Your wife will go far, Saint-Simon. Keep an eye on her!”

And she laughed the silvery laugh of the Mortemarts. There was a bit of a jeer in it.

Afterwards Gabrielle said to me, “She may be a bastard, but she has charm.”

“I suppose there's no reason a bastard shouldn't have charm. Her mother was the most fascinating woman in France.”

“And her husband is a prince of the blood?”

“Her husband is the
first
prince of the blood.”

“How did he relish being married to a bastard?”

“Very little. But he was young, and did what he was told. His grandfather, the great Condé, had been a rebel and wanted to make his peace with the king. Besides, there was a precedent. His cousin, the late prince de Conti, was married off to the king's bastard by Vallière, Marie-Anne.”

“It sounds as if the whole royal family was being bastardized.”

“It just about is. Or will be, if the king goes through with his plan of marrying Mademoiselle de Blois to the due de Chartres.”

“To his own nephew?”

“To his own nephew.”

“A grandson of France?”

Gabrielle had learned her lessons well. I patted her hand. “Even so. We may live to see the dauphin's sons not spared.”

Gabrielle seemed pensive. “I should like to ask you something,” she said at last. “Something personal.”

“Isn't that a wife's right?”

“You must be the judge of that. And please tell me if I'm overstepping myself. I have been noting the principal activities of the men at court. They hunt. They gamble. They seek positions. And then...” She hesitated.

“They make love?” I finished for her, with a wink. “All except me. I have no need to go beyond my own blissful nest for that.”

Gabrielle smiled, perhaps the least bit perfunctorily. “But the other things—you don't go in for them, either. You never gamble. When you go riding, it's by yourself or with Savonne. And there doesn't seem to be any office you're after.”

“There isn't. I have everything I want.”

“Well, that's just it. It occurs to me that as a courtier... you're...”

“Unique?”

“Well, let us say highly individual. I cannot help wondering why you would not prefer to be at La Ferté.”

It may seem strange to my reader, but until that moment I had never really asked myself that question. I was so full of the life at court that I perhaps may have wondered if life really existed anywhere else, or at least with anything like the same intensity. To be a part of the king's ritual seemed as important as saying mass was to a priest. To live close to the source of power struck me, perhaps fantastically, as a kind of accomplishment in itself. If heaven, as some maintained, was simply the contemplation of God, perhaps the contemplation of the monarch was a kind of earthly preparation for it. I said this now to Gabrielle.

“But you're so critical of the king,” she objected.

“Of the man, for he
is
a man. And he has failings, grave ones. He has allowed himself to be persuaded by parvenu ministers, who have no sense of Old France, that his power is unlimited. But for the
office
of the monarch my admiration is complete.”

“Well... shouldn't you, then... shouldn't you...?”

“What?”

“
Do
something about it?”

I stared. “Do what about what?”

“Help to advise the king where he is going wrong. Couldn't you seek a post?”

“Beauvillier is the only peer he has ever had in his cabinet.”

“I see. Well, of course, I know nothing about it.”

Gabrielle, with her perfect tact, seeing that I was upset, dropped the subject and did not raise it again. But she had given me something to think about. Why indeed could I not bring my influence, however small, to bear on the turn of events? I had a sharp eye, an excellent memory and a readily recording pen; I had many friends and connections in court, some in the very highest places. Was it necessary to be a prince, a general or even a minister to have a hand in the shaping of events? Did I have to look further than Madame de Maintenon to see in what devious ways power could be exercised?

Gabrielle had to give up court life shortly after this colloquy because of a painful and difficult pregnancy. She was very much disturbed at not being able to be with me at Versailles, but she rightly considered it her more vital duty to deliver a healthy heir, and she forced herself to spend long tedious hours on a couch. In the end, alas, all of this did little good, for not only was she brought to bed prematurely of a girl, but of a dwarfish and defective one. My disappointment, however, was obliterated by the passion of hers.

“I've failed you! I've failed you!” she cried again and again, twisting her thin arms tightly about my neck. “But you'll see! I'll produce an heir for you. You will not have saved me in vain. Oh, I
promise
you, dear one!”

My mother and I feared for her life, so desperate was her frenzy. I had had no conception of the violence of her gratitude to me and the intensity of her compulsion to make good. I was almost awed at the passionate loyalty of this ally I had brought into my life, like a man who walks with a savage dog that regards all the world as threatening his master. But Gabrielle's fit subsided at last, and she was once again the quiet, patient, reserved and observing creature that she had been. Only she never showed any interest in our poor little girl.

G
ABRIELLE'S
first substantial contribution to my career at court was in the affair of the alms bag. It was the custom after mass for the young duchesse de Bourgogne, the king's granddaughter-in-law, who, as we had lost both queen and dauphine, was the first lady of France, to ask a duchess to pass a velvet purse for contributions to the church. The “Lorrainers,” members of the House of Guise, who should have ranked with us as peers, were always claiming a higher position as “foreign princes,” based on silly titles bestowed on them by the Holy Roman Emperor because of scraps of land held along the border. I now learned the latest outrage: that their ladies were claiming exemption from the alms-bag duty. There was nothing for me to do but organize the dukes to make a similar claim.

“But who will pass the alms bag?” Gabrielle asked me.

“How should I know? Perhaps some simple gentlewoman.”

“But if the duchess
asks
me?”

“If she asks you, of course, you must. But she can't ask you if you're not there. What I'm saying is that the duchesses should abstain from mass.”

“Won't it anger the king?”

“I can't help that, my dear. It's the Lorrainers he should be mad at. They've been an infernal nuisance ever since the days of the League. Why a monarch who's so sensitive to treason should put up with them, I can't conceive.”

Gabrielle, I had to admit, was correct about the king's reaction. After the first day, when half the duchesses at court absented themselves from mass, the due de Beauvillier sent for me, and Gabrielle and I went at once to his apartment in the north wing. The duke, who, as I have indicated, was the only peer in the king's council, was an old friend of my parents and had been my guide and mentor ever since I first came to court. I admired him without reserve and had even once offered to marry any one of his eight daughters. Fortunately for me and Gabrielle, the oldest had wished to take holy orders, the second had been a cripple and the rest too young.

“I think you ought to know,” Beauvillier told me, “that the king spoke of you this morning at the end of the council. He said that ever since you had resigned your commission, you have been obsessed with petty questions of rank and precedence.”

“Oh, he remembered about my commission?” I had left the army, two years before, to devote myself to the court.

“The king remembers everything.”

“Then I wish he would remember the countless disloyalties of the Lorrainers!”

“If he doesn't appear to, you can be sure he has a reason. In any case, he wishes me to convey to you his desire that the duchesse de Saint-Simon should pass the alms bag on Monday.”

I hesitated. “Is that an order, sir?”

“Is the king's desire not always an order?”

“Very well. But surely I need not be present. He will not require me to assist at my own humiliation?”

“That is up to you.”

“Ah, but, my dear, may
I
make a suggestion?”

I turned to Gabrielle in mild surprise. It was not like her to intervene in my conversation with an older person. “Certainly.”

“Request an audience with the king! Tell him you raised the issue of the alms bag only because you thought it was one in which he was not concerned. But now that you know he wants me to carry the bag, you are not only proud but honored!”

I looked into her anxious eyes with even greater surprise. Then I turned to the old duke.

“Do it, Saint-Simon!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “And be thankful for a smart little wife.”

“And then ask the king for an apartment in the palace!” Gabrielle hurriedly added.

“Speak to him at his dinner,” Beauvillier advised me. “Request an audience for tomorrow. I'll put in a word for you at the coucher.” He glanced at his watch. “It's almost one now. Hurry up if you want a spot near his table!”

***

The king liked to sup with members of his family, but he was inclined to dine alone, that is, alone at table. There was always a group of courtiers standing by the small table at which he was served, silently regarding him. He ate, as he did everything else, with remarkable solemnity, dignity and grace. He would raise a chicken bone to his lips, take an incisive, effective bite and then chew slowly, his dark, glazed eyes focused in an opaque stare. When he turned his head to survey the room or the watching crowd, this stare might be softened to encompass not an acknowledgment, certainly not a greeting, but simply a recognition. Somehow you always knew that he knew you. And he not only knew who was present; he knew who was not.

There was something hypnotic about the effect of one man exercising a natural function while his audience remained motionless. It was like watching a priest take communion. The huge, high-piled black perruque moved rhythmically with the royal mastications; the high, arched brows twitched; the great aquiline nose snorted after the thick lips had sipped wine. His most ordinary acts were majestical. Those of his household who were privileged to watch him on his closed stool said that he made even his defecations imperial.

It was permissible for those standing closest to the table to address the king when he was not actually swallowing or masticating. Waiting until his gaze took me in, I stepped forward and bowed.

“May I be permitted a word, sire, on the question of the alms bag?”

The dark eyes emitted a faint glitter. “There
is
no question, sir. The matter has been regulated.”

“But, sire, I humbly suggest there has been a misapprehension of my attitude. I wish only to make explicit my utter loyalty and devotion.”