The Exchange of Princesses (16 page)

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

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,

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 boat 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.

“And the two babies inside the golden frame in the foreground, who are they?” Louis XV asks.

“Two children of Apollo, that is, of your great-grandfather, who died while still in the cradle.”

A shadow passes over Louis XV’s face.

The regent rises to his feet. Was there ever anyone more worthless in war than Marshal de Villeroy? Not very
likely! Listening to him go into transports over the battle paintings and ceiling frescoes is unbearable. Moreover, the regent finds the fashion for painted ceilings hideous. Plus he needs to change his shirt — the one he’s wearing is soaked through. Since he doesn’t have any clothes at Versailles yet, he has a young worker borrow some for him from the palace storage rooms. As he’s taking off his jacket, a folded note drops from his pocket. With his nose on the paper, he reads these words: