The Cat and the King (18 page)

I was standing with a group of gentlemen in the billiard room, watching him finish a game with the due de la Rochefoucauld. The dauphin, as usual, lost, which did not improve his temper, and as he turned away from the table, still holding his cue, he overheard, in the ostensibly casual chatter about the war in Spain, some gentleman, obviously trying to “draw” him, state that the due d'Orléans should be sent back to the front.

“Do you think so, sir? Do you indeed?” Monseigneur demanded, brandishing his cue like a weapon. “And why, pray, do you think any such thing?”

“Because he can win victories for France, Monseigneur.”

“The devil himself can have luck,” the dauphin retorted, with a stertorous grunt that was almost a belch. “But I think you will find that the king can see through a hollow victory like Lérida to the treason behind it!”

Our little group, delighted at this outburst, sought, by their feigned expressions of shock, to push the heir apparent to further indiscretions.

“Treason!”

“What can Monseigneur mean by that?”

“Surely, sir, you do not refer to your cousin of Orléans?”

Only poor Berry seemed genuinely upset. He was, after all, already half in love with Mademoiselle de Valois. “Oh, Father, treason,” he stammered, “isn't that... well... isn't that going a bit far?”

“Well, what better word would
you
choose?” his father demanded in exasperation. “He wanted your brother's crown for himself, didn't he?” Here, turning back to the billiard table to fling his cue upon it, he encountered my eye and immediately stiffened. “Did he not, Monsieur de Saint-Simon?” he called challengingly.

“I believe, sir, that the king interpreted his nephew's behavior more leniently.”

“Did he so? Did he indeed? Well, of course, the king makes every effort to see members of his family in a charitable light. But that only increases the duty of his family to see that his charity does not expose him to treachery. And in this case I have a duty to
two
sovereigns.” He looked around the group in his most comically haughty manner. He might have been a caricature of his father. “After all, gentlemen, am I not the only prince in Europe who can describe two living monarchs as ‘the king my father' and ‘the king my son'?” A perfunctory murmur of admiration greeted this oft-repeated, rhetorical question. “The king of Spain and I, Monsieur de Saint-Simon, are in perfect accord in our interpretation of what happened at Lérida.”

“I am only sorry that his majesty and your royal highness could not have been present at those conversations. I am confident that nothing was said that could have offended you.”

“But you were not there, sir!”

“No, sir. But I believe implicitly in the honor and loyalty of your cousin and brother-in-law.”

“In the loyalty and honor of an atheist!” Monseigneur exclaimed wrathfully, irked at my stress of the double relationship. “In the loyalty and honor of a man who spends his days in a heathen laboratory, playing with black magic, and his nights in debauchery! Monsieur de Saint-Simon, I can only say that you are either his dupe or his tool, and I will not insult you by calling you the latter!”

Tight-lipped and trembling with anger, I bowed and left the chamber. I hurried to our apartment, where I found Gabrielle. She showed little surprise when I told her what had happened.

“Very well, it's war,” she said in clipped tones. “War to the death. Madame la Duchesse wants it, and Madame la Duchesse will get it. I'm going to Madame de Bourgogne. Be ready to join me there the moment I send for you.”

“What will you do?”

“We must go over Orléans' head. There's no other way.”

“But, Gabrielle, I gave him my word!”

“It's for his own good. He will understand. Believe me!”

When Gabrielle's usher came for me, half an hour later, I hurried to the Bourgognes' pavilion, and found myself in the presence of both duke and duchess. It was the first time that the four of us had been alone together.

Let me pause a moment to describe the man who might have been, had he lived, one of our greatest kings, and his enchanting consort. The due de Bourgogne had a long, equine face and a short, stooped figure; the beauty of his young manhood, and beauty it was, seemed confined to his tensely glowing eyes and fine, pale forehead. He was serious, almost to a fault, determined to dedicate every hour to preparing himself for an earthly kingdom. It is our tragedy that a heavenly one should have pre-empted it. He never seemed to have even a minute to discuss anything but problems of government or religion. He would look at you blankly, even impatiently, if you attempted to talk to him of gossip or court matters, and then counter with a question such as: “But what will be the effect of the edict against monopoly on the carpet makers of Lille?” But if, like his grandfather, he had no small talk, he lacked altogether the king's royal demeanor. He was too nervous, too apologetic, too intense. We hoped that a more majestic air would come to him with time.

The duchess was just the opposite, except that her eyes wrought the same kind of enchantment that made one forget insignificant features and bad teeth. She was all charm, a charm that seemed to engulf other qualities, both good and bad, making them seem unnecessary, perhaps irrelevant. Thus it did not seem to matter that she was timid, frivolous, often inconsequential, almost a scatterbrain, or that her affections seemed almost too kittenish to be real. She was fond of her husband, who adored her with passion, but her smiles went everywhere, and there were those, malevolent I believe, who suggested that she sent more than smiles. In any event, she was so deeply embedded in the affections of the king and of Madame de Maintenon (“my aunt,” she called the latter) that she had made herself—perhaps without any real design—a power at court.

The duke was pacing the chamber when I was admitted, seemingly very disturbed. He turned to me at once. “You know all about this, Monsieur de Saint-Simon? It is a fearful business. Your wife and mine think of it only as a means of preventing my brother's marriage to Mademoiselle de Bourbon, but I see it as affecting my father's soul!”

“But do the two things have to be mutually exclusive, my dear?” his wife inquired. “Surely the king, as soon as he is aware of it, will seek to discourage Monseigneur's connection with Madame la Duchesse. So we shall have killed two birds with one stone!”

“Particularly,” Gabrielle put in, perhaps a bit too eagerly, “as a marriage between Mademoiselle de Bourbon and the due de Berry would intensify the intimacy between her mother and Monseigneur.”

Bourgogne gave Gabrielle a quick, sharp glance, as if to question her tact. But Gabrielle did not alter her expression. She stood her ground, motionless, her eyes cast downwards.

“How is the king to be told?” Bourgogne pursued. “I don't suppose I'm the one for that job.”

“No, dear, of course not,” the duchess replied soothingly. “
This
is peculiarly a woman's battle. Let me tell you how I propose to fight it.”

“No, no, I'd rather not know!”

“Oh, but, my dearest,
yes,
or otherwise you will think that I've committed infamies! Listen to me—it's very simple. I shall pick a moment when I have persuaded Madame de Maintenon to spend an extra hour with the holy sisters at Saint-Cyr. That shouldn't be hard, as, poor dear, she's always craving more time there but doesn't dare leave the king. And, indeed, I'm the only person, for the moment, with whom she
can
leave him.”

“Why can't you talk to him before Madame de Maintenon?” Bourgogne demanded.

“Because she hates Orléans so violently she'd swallow any horror on the other side.”

“That's true, sir,” I confirmed.

“So I must see the king alone,” the duchesse de Bourgogne continued. “I shall get him started on the old days and his love for Marie Mancini. Oh, yes, he likes to talk about those things,” she added, when she saw my look of surprise. “With
me,
anyway. He thinks me a wily but romantic Savoyard. Then I can touch on the matter of him and my own grandmother, the first Madame, and hint at his affair with her, which will introduce a note of the illicit, even the unnatural...”

“Marie-Adélaïde!” her husband protested in pain.

“We're making omelettes, my darling! We must be prepared to break a few eggs. I shall lead him lightly over some of the great amours of the court, gradually guiding him to the path of the unusual—or shall we say the bizarre? Until we come, quite naturally, to your father, my dear, and funny, fat little Mademoiselle Choin. Oh, I promise you, the king loves to laugh about
her.
And then it will be time, if all goes well, to put this candid question to him: ‘In that respect, sire, my aunt de Conti' (he likes to have me refer to his bastards that way) ‘used an expression the other day that surprised me. She spoke of the relationship between Monseigneur and my aunt de Bourbon as “romantic.” Almost as if they were lovers. What do you suppose she could have meant by that?'”

“And that's all you'll say?” Bourgogne demanded.

“That's all I need say. He never lets anything drop. He'll call in the princesse de Conti, and she'll be on the spot. If she denies it,
she'll have me to face, and the duchesse du Lude, who was with me when she said it.”

“But why,” I put in, “won't she simply get off the hook by saying that she was speaking hyperbolically? About a perfectly harmless relationship?”

“Because she won't want to!” Gabrielle responded now for the duchess. “She detests Madame la Duchesse for cutting her out with the dauphin. She hasn't dared tell the king, but she'll be only too happy to do so under the excuse of his cross-examination!”

The duke turned to me. “What do you say, Saint-Simon? Should we get mixed up in this kind of dirt?”

My heart was touched at the way he seemed to be drawing a line between the sexes. It was as if he were asking me to stand with him on the side of honor and decency and forbid our wives the subtle deviousness of what suddenly seemed an almost oriental court. But then I remembered the stertorous rudeness of the dauphin and the malicious eye of Madame la Duchesse.

“I'm afraid it's the only way, sir. I simply blush that our wives have had to show it to us.”

T
HERE WAS
a sense, some days later, throughout the corridors and reception chambers of Versailles, of a great piece of news about to break. Little groups of two or three stood about, nodding their heads gravely. Madame la Duchesse was seen storming out of Madame de Maintenon's room, haughty, defiant; and the dauphin, who had ordered his carriage for Meudon, was seen pacing back and forth in the Cour du Marbre, too impatient to wait until its arrival was announced to him. The due and duchesse d'Orléans, coming from St. Cloud, made no secret of their exhilaration. We walked, the three of us, in sprightly fashion about the parterre d'eau in full view of the courtiers who gawked at us from the windows of the great gallery.

“It's coming off!” the duchess said excitedly. “I know it's coming off!

“Has the king told you so?” I asked.

“Of course not, but you know how he is. He has no confidences. He treats his children exactly the way he treats everyone else. But last night at the supper he asked me several questions about my daughter. Rather searching questions, I thought.”

“And were your answers satisfactory to him?”

“As satisfactory as I could make them.”

“You mean as satisfactory as wishful thinking could make them!” Orléans intervened with a burst of laughter. “Let us hope that darling Elizabeth will shape up! Which reminds me, my dear,” he continued to his wife, “I must have a word with our old friend alone.” And taking me by the elbow, he propelled me a few steps away from his wife, who now pretended to be absorbed in looking at the fountains. “Your friend Savonne,” he said in a low voice. “Can you keep him away from court for a while? I can get him any army orders he wants.”

“I can try. But why?”

“Don't you know?”

“But that was just a flirtation!”

“There are no flirtations at Versailles, Saint-Simon. You should know that. Get him away if you can. That's all I ask.”

“You mean... you mean that Mademoiselle de Valois might refuse the due de Berry because of Savonne!”

“No.” Orléans' laugh was more like a little grunt. “She's too much of a Bourbon for that. It's he I'm worried about. He's such an ass. And an ass in love may do anything!”

I left him at once to find Savonne and take him for a walk in the orangerie. To my astonishment he made no secret of his passion for the little Valois and even claimed that it was returned! I was horrified.

“Then Orléans is right! You must go back to the army immediately!”

“It's obvious that you've never been in love,” he said bitterly.

I let this pass. “It's obvious that I have a higher conception than you of our duty to the royal family!”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense. Everyone in the royal family sleeps with everyone else. Look at Madame la Duchesse. Look even at your sacred duchesse de Bour—”

“Hold your tongue!” I tried to put my hand over his mouth.

“Well, why don't you hold yours?” Savonne cried, breaking away from me. “I'm sick and tired of being bossed around by you!”

“You mean you have the gall to stand there and tell me that you intend to continue an intrigue with a princess who is about to become a daughter of France!”

“I mean that I'm a man, damn it all, and that as long as things are carried on in this court the way they
are
carried on, I see no reason why I should put a hundred miles between myself and the one creature in the world I've ever loved! Even if all I'm allowed to do is gaze at her when she walks behind the king to mass!”