The Exchange of Princesses (5 page)

Child’s play … the Parisians have it right. These marriages are child’s play, but organized by adults. Will the children be able to breathe life into them and animate them with
their imaginations? Do these particular children even have a childhood that can be saved? And for that matter, who in this period can lay claim to a childhood? Certainly not the children of the common people, put to work as soon as they can stand up straight! But how about these royal children? Apart from the luxury in which they grow up, will it be granted them to enjoy a carefree time before they must take up the worries and responsibilities of adulthood? A time for playing, for devoting all their energies to exploring the world and its sensations? At present, like miniature, brightly painted marionettes, they concentrate all their efforts on correctly executing their assigned moves. For them, the festivities begin in the form of religious ceremonies that follow one another in close succession. In Paris, Mlle de Montpensier is baptized; shortly thereafter, in the church of the royal abbey of Val-de-Grâce, she is confirmed at the hands of Cardinal de Noailles, archbishop of Paris; then, a few days before her marriage, her confessor, the parish priest of the church of Saint-Eustache, gives her her first communion. Confirmation, first communion, matrimony; the sacraments are dispensed at emergency speed. In Madrid, the infanta is also baptized. Will the sequence be the same for her — confirmation, first communion, matrimony? No; Mariana Victoria is deemed too immature for confirmation and communion. She will skip directly to matrimony. The young bride-to-be, just baptized and adorable in her white lace, shivers under the drops of holy water.

The day before the marriage contract between Mlle de Montpensier and the Prince of Asturias is to be signed, King Louis,
accompanied by the Count de Clermont and the Marshal de Villeroy, goes hunting at the Château de la Muette. The hunt and the male entourage make him merry. The air smells of mushrooms and damp wood. He feels like laughing, like riding on, plunging haphazardly through fields and forests.

The two contracts are signed on November 16. Madame, the Princess Palatine (whose unhappy marriage to Monsieur, Louis XIV’s brother and the regent’s father, began on that very day fifty years before), stands proxy for the little infanta, while the Duke of Osuna, ambassador extraordinary of Spain, represents Don Luis. The king doesn’t hide his displeasure, but a sad face has never been an obstacle to the smooth progress of a ceremony. As for Mlle de Montpensier, however terrible her bad humor is and whatever secret horror awaits her, the ceremonial is sufficiently brilliant to drown out any false note that may come from so small a person. In the evening, King Louis leads her out to open the ball. Do they know there was once a notion of marrying them to each other? And a marriage between the king and her little sister, Philippine Élisabeth, Mlle de Beaujolais, seven years old, was considered as well. But such machinations are beyond the dance partners. They aren’t informed of any plans concerning themselves. Besides, these particular plans aren’t serious. They’re just false rumors designed to anger the king of Spain and intensify his desire that his own daughter, and not a daughter of the despised House of Orléans, become queen of France. The rumors were bait, which Philip V has swallowed. The king and his cousin dance without exchanging a word. From time to time Mlle
de Montpensier’s somber face glows bizarrely. A masked crowd hedges them round. The masks are impatient for the fete to begin, for the moment when they can
really
start having fun — that is, the moment the marrying children clear the floor.

The regent rejoices in the success of his plans. He participates in the ball triumphantly, a conquering hero, at least during the first few hours. At a certain point, however, a bout of nausea compels him to leave the room, and he spends the night retching and vomiting.

That evening, after the signing of the marriage contracts, after the ball, and after dutifully accompanying his cousin, the future queen of Spain — who turns out to be as little delighted with her destiny as he is with his own — the king attends a performance of Lully’s
Phaëton
at the Palais-Royal. It’s his first opera. Confronted with the magnificent sets, the vivid costumes, the bright, sumptuous lighting, the shock of the voices, he’s seized with a kind of exhilaration that by the last act has dwindled into total dejection. The revelation that strikes him is the opposite of rapture. He discovers the limitless boredom music brings him. Through
Phaëton
, he glimpses the innumerable operas, like so many trials, that he’ll be obliged to endure. He crosses his arms and falls asleep with his cheek against the gold thread of his formal coat.

No Goodbye

Two days later, amid general indifference, Louise Elisabeth sets off for Spain. Her mother hardly looks at her.
Her grandmother, the Princess Palatine, comments on her departure: “One cannot say that Mlle. de Montpensier is ugly, but she is surely the most unpleasant child alive, in her way of eating, of drinking, of speaking. She makes a person lose all patience, and so I shed no tears, and neither did she, when we bade each other farewell.” The king wishes her a good journey to Madrid and returns to the Tuileries. The regent, following the laws of etiquette, accompanies his daughter as far as Bourg-la-Reine, about six miles to the south. Mlle de Montpensier shares her coach with her father and her brother, who will soon leave her; with her governess, the horrible Mme de Cheverny, all covered with red blotches and disfigured by scurvy, who will leave her at the border; and with the Duchess de Ventadour, the infanta’s future governess, who won’t be crossing into Spain either.

Mme de Ventadour is, without doubt, the best disposed person in this business, but given her devotion to her king, her present assignment both flatters and troubles her. He kissed her coldly this morning and thus spoiled her leave-taking a little, but at bottom she’s calm. She knows she’s in no danger of experiencing with the infanta the transports of maternal love she experienced with the little king. And besides, isn’t he an orphan? Whereas the infanta is no such thing. She has a mother indeed, a mother who won’t let herself be overlooked; moreover, the duchess thinks with tears in her eyes, could there be a handsomer boy in the world than her king? There’s no chance that the infanta will put him in the shade. The still beautiful “Maman Ventadour,” feeling stronger and younger, settles into the coach and abandons herself to the vanities of appearance. She’s been named
maîtresse du voyage
, mistress of the journey. She’s traveling in grand style, escorted by eighty splendidly dressed bodyguards. But they look drab next to the 150 guards, led by the Prince de Rohan-Soubise, who bring up the rear of the march.

Mlle de Montpensier is frowning. She mutters that her corset’s too tight, that it’s beastly cold in the coach. Her father remains calm, but underneath the kind facade his impatience is perceptible. He wants to have done with this farewell farce. And yet Mlle de Montpensier’s behavior seems quite acceptable if he thinks about the crises and suicide threats of her sister, Mlle de Valois, married one year earlier. More than threats; she was prepared to do anything to avoid joining her husband, the Duke of Modena. She purposely visited the convent at Chelles, on the pretext of seeing her sister the abbess, but in reality because she knew the place was afflicted by an epidemic. “Don’t go there,” she was told, “or you run the risk of catching smallpox.” “That’s what I’m looking for,” she replied. But all she caught there was the measles, which at least gained her a little time. She stopped eating and wept incessantly. On the day of her proxy marriage, people noticed her swollen face, her dejection. She cried so much she couldn’t articulate a single word.

Fortunately, Mlle de Valois is now in Modena; otherwise, she would be capable of communicating her rebellious spirit to her sister. Not that Mlle de Montpensier is docile, but she’s still ignorant of desire, and she doesn’t know that its imperatives have nothing to do with politics. Of this fact Mlle de Valois is well aware. The Duke de Richelieu was her first master in debauchery. The Duke de Richelieu,
that popinjay, that pervert, that relentless destroyer of the peace of families and states, that plague, that brilliant shit-stirrer … the word “brilliant” is an exaggeration, the regent thinks, correcting himself, but “plague” is thoroughly accurate. His daughter Charlotte Aglaé — Mlle de Valois — is in Modena, but she’s trying to return to France. She writes one letter after another, complaining about her in-laws and, most recently, demanding the annulment of her marriage on the grounds of impotence. Her father-in-law has had a wall built between her apartments and those of his other daughters-in-law. But she doesn’t give in … She’s not especially beautiful, the Duchess of Modena, with her ugly teeth and her big nose, already ruined by tobacco, but she has character and a taste for combat … More than mere threats of suicide? The regent remembers her “accident,” which took place shortly before her departure. Mlle de Valois launched her horse at a gallop through a small doorway. She didn’t duck and struck her head with such force that she was thrown backward onto the animal’s croup.

Mlle de Montpensier says she’s too hot, opens her window, sticks her head out. The rain destroys her coiffure and trickles down her neck.

The regent feels great relief when they reach Bourg-la-Reine. He kisses his daughter, pinches her cheek amiably, and jumps out of the coach.

The Duke de Saint-Simon’s Three Bows

The Spanish capital breathes an air of expectation and excitement. For the past three months, rumors about a marriage between the infanta Mariana Victoria and the king of France, and also about other royal unions, have been spreading. On the streets, in the marketplaces, in the taverns and the churches, people discuss, hope, assume. To know the truth, it would be necessary to penetrate the Royal Alcázar, an immense white-stone building with narrow windows and a jumble of rooms, to reach the interior of the palace, and to gain access to the royal chamber. It’s there that the king, in spite of his antipathy for this dwelling place, spends most of his life, at the queen’s side,
glued to her
. The people detest the Italian woman and continue to love Philip V’s first wife, the adorable and courageous Maria Luisa of Savoy,
la Savoyarde, la Savoyana
. Still today, when the king and queen move about Madrid, at the passage of their coach the crowd cries out, “
Viva la Savoyana!
” Elisabeth Farnese is wounded by
such outbursts, but not gravely. She has lived through a childhood and an adolescence in which affection had no place. Her father died when she was very young. Her mother, a haughty, vindictive woman determined to break her daughter’s character, succeeded in making it hardly different from her own. Her contact with Elisabeth was rare, and she relegated the girl — practically a prisoner, unknown at court — to attic rooms high up in the enormous ducal palace in Parma. Elisabeth’s only visitors were teachers, priests, and, when needed, physicians. This system, far from making the young girl more yielding, hardened her. She chose to dedicate herself to her studies, and should a marriage possibility present itself, she resolved to realize it come what may. Love didn’t enter into her daydreams. Besides, she wasn’t a dreamer. In her relationship with the king of Spain, she soon understood that she must employ all the resources of her personality and her body, not to try to eliminate the ghost of Maria Luisa of Savoy, but to set a screen around it, to block its apparitions. She doesn’t deviate from her plan. The king’s attached to her. Excessively so, and she could wish for some intervals of independence, but since that’s impossible, she does all she can to augment the king’s need of her, to ensure that their union becomes still closer, clammy, unbreathable — a knot of embraces. The king and queen form a single, indivisible entity.

The brocade curtains, adorned with mother-of-pearl, silver, and gold, are drawn, both those on the windows and those around the canopy bed. Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese seem to be agitated by contrary feelings. Sometimes they smile and savor in anticipation the happy event of their daughter’s
marriage; sometimes they interpret the delay in the ambassador extraordinary’s arrival as a bad omen. The king tends toward pessimism, but his wife reassures him. They say their prayers. The monarch is brought his morning beverage, which serves as his breakfast: a white, hot liquid, a mixture of bouillon, milk, wine, egg yolks, cloves, and cinnamon. The queen takes up her tapestry, which she keeps within reach on a little table. On the days when the king works with his minister of state, the Marquis de Grimaldo, she follows the conversation closely. Without laying aside her needle and thread, she participates and makes decisions. In fact, she takes a more active interest than the king, who’s silent and morose most of the time and manifestly tormented when there are political matters to be dealt with. There’s no difference between the way he talks to his minister of state and the way he grinds out his prayers.

When the queen’s in bed, she’s never busy with her tapestry for long. The generally gloomy and dull king undergoes a change when the desire to make love comes over him. At those times, he displays great ardor and vehemence. He flings himself upon her. His amorous temperament is gossip material for servants and courtiers. When the queen refuses him, it’s said that the result is bedlam and tumult in the royal bedchamber. The king shouts and threatens. The queen shouts and complains. She calls for help, weeps. It seems unlikely that anyone would come running … When she finally yields, the king’s pleasure is even more intense, and he gives her whatever she desires.

But today, under the winter sun of this limpid morning, as she considers the miracle of the new rapprochement
with the kingdom of France, she has no reason to refuse the king. She puts down her tapestry and caresses him. “How handsome you are,” she murmurs to the ugly face leaning over her. Whereupon, without interrupting his thrusting, the king grunts, “But why hasn’t the Duke de Saint-Simon arrived yet? Didn’t he leave a month ago, or am I wrong?”