The Exchange of Princesses (20 page)

The princess’s accident allows Don Luis to enhance his correspondence with a novelty. “As for other news,” he begins his account, in the same style employed by Their Majesties on the exceptional occasions when an event unrelated to hunting has occurred.

To change Louise Élisabeth’s ideas, and to satisfy his own curiosity, Father de Laubrussel proposes a visit to the Habsburg Apartments, the Austrian part of the palace — a zone long since abandoned to dust and to the vestiges of a pitiless faith. Following a servant carrying a torch, the girl and the Jesuit, she leaning on the priest’s arm, walk down long, constricted corridors that end in chambers of limited
size with narrow or even blocked-up windows. Priest and princess feel the sadness inherent in abandoned rooms. The light of the flaming torch picks out a few objects: furniture, beds, desks, screens. They accentuate the effect of emptiness, but the walls, for their part, are overloaded, hung with wooden, ivory, and silver crucifixes, with innumerable painted canvases recalling and glorifying the tortures suffered by martyred saints. Severed heads, lopped breasts, gouged-out eyes, broken, torn, nailed limbs, bodies chained, beaten, buried alive, pierced with arrows, devoured by lions … Louise Élisabeth and Father de Laubrussel find it hard to go on. The mute cry of those faces, disfigured by suffering and yet ecstatic, strikes them like a whiplash.

“That one there, the one we keep seeing, the one broiling on a gridiron, who’s he?” Louise Élisabeth asks.

“Saint Lawrence. El Escorial is dedicated to him. In fact, the floor plan is in the form of a gridiron. Do you mean to say you didn’t know that?”

“A torture palace!” the girl cries, and considering her pallor and her injured head, she sees herself as El Escorial’s most recent martyr.

Don Luis comes bearing a gift for his wife: a new edition of Baroness d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales. Louise Élisabeth is happy with the present. They remain silent together, afloat in an atmosphere of unusual calm. Then they hear the sound of carriages, running footmen, Elisabeth Farnese’s authoritative voice giving orders. The charm is broken, the sweet spell vanishes. Don Luis declares that he must go and welcome the king and queen.

“Please stay a little longer. I feel bad in this palace at night.”

“And during the day?”

“Days are easier.”

“Then, Madame, you are in luck, thank God. For me day and night are identical.”

He kisses her hand with his habitual respect and, using one finger, dares to caress her cheek.

A War Game

Before long at the Palace of Versailles, all rumors, illnesses, wicked spells, and scandals have been swept away. The “charming couple” has triumphed over the forces of evil. In the royal chapel, the king receives the sacrament of confirmation from the hands of Cardinal de Rohan, the grand almoner of France, who has first favored him with a most eloquent exhortation. The ceremony takes place in the presence of the regent, the Duke de Bourbon, the Count de Clermont, the Prince de Conti, and a great many lords and ladies of the court. In the afternoon, the king attends vespers. Mme de Ventadour marvels:

Two weeks later, the king makes his first communion. His reverential demeanor arouses praise. He visits several churches in Versailles. The infanta, wearing a sky-blue dress, bedizened with medals and crosses, throbs for joy. The king is celebrated more than she, as one would expect on such an occasion; why would she take offense at that? She knows that the sacrament of first communion is a serious matter, and in her ingenuousness, she’s convinced that everything which adds value to the king redounds to her own.

The regent himself is sensitive to this breath of virtue; he thinks about separating from his mistress so that his immorality won’t act like a gangrene, corrupting the purity of the space in which the innocent couple moves.

Madame comes to pay court to the infanta as often as possible. The ceremonial is always the same. As soon as Mariana Victoria hears the announcement of Madame’s arrival, she drops everything and runs to throw herself in the old lady’s arms. Next, holding her by the hand, the infanta leads her into her chamber. She takes a doll’s chair for herself and directs Madame to an armchair. And then their endless conversation resumes. But in high summer, Madame stays in the Château of Saint-Cloud. She comes less often. The infanta yearns for the days when they were neighbors.
It’s been explained to her that Madame will go back to the Palais-Royal in the autumn. Before September’s over, the child starts expecting her, but in October she learns some news both good and bad: at the end of August, Madame suffered an attack of jaundice. She’s back in the Palais-Royal, but her feet are so swollen she can’t move. She lives in her memories. She contemplates a map of the Palatinate, which she has had placed near her bed. A “lovely map,” she writes, “in which I have already done a great deal of roaming. I have already gone from Heidelberg to Frankfurt, from Mannheim to Frankenthal, and from there to Worms. I have also visited Neustadt. My God, it makes me think about the good old days that will never come again.”

Something’s lacking in the king’s education. He needs — without putting his life in danger — experience in war. His mentors could have him observe battles from afar, but France is at peace. Well then, let’s put on a show! Let’s build a fort for the occasion, let’s take some soldiers from the royal battalion and divide them into two groups: attackers and besieged. Let’s call the besieged the Dutch. The battlefield will be at Porchefontaine, right next to Versailles. The spectacle of this imaginary siege attracts a large audience and the soldiers play their parts vigorously, all the while taking care not to injure one another. The king leads the attack. He throws out at random, but very earnestly, such terms as “bastions,” “moats,” “ravelins.” The queen-infanta, from her seat in the grandstand, observes the fighting, shuddering at the sound of cannon fire and trembling if she loses sight of the king, be it only for a minute, as he caracoles at
the head of his army. The Dutch hold out just long enough. Toward the end of each day of the siege, the imperious infanta reminds the warriors, “Gentle soldiers, count the dead, spare the wounded.” (At one point, she notices a certain carelessness on the part of the slain combatants lying on the battlefield — some of whom are taking advantage of the opportunity to chew a little tobacco — and sends them a message, by order of the queen: “The gentlemen who have been killed will please conduct themselves accordingly.”) She slips away so that she can be the first to congratulate the king. Victory is approaching, the Dutch are going to waver. Young boys in greater and greater numbers have been arriving to observe the battle. They’ve brought their weapons: slingshots, sticks, stones. These add a touch of reality to the exchanges. A Dutchman whose face has been broken open by a large stone howls at this violation of trust.

Trenches are dug, battle lines come into contact and attack one another, cardboard bombs explode, spies are hanged in effigy, the intrusive young rascals are run off, and the show goes on as it should. Fort Montreuil, the Dutch stronghold, capitulates on September 29 after more than ten days of resistance. Near the end, the fighting grows more intense, and the king is brought to the battlefield at night, too; the wounded are crying out, and in the light of the campfires that add even more drama to the scene, the boy squeezes his pretty gold-and-mother-of-pearl-encrusted bayonet with all his might. Between two assaults, he snacks on muscat grapes and roasted chestnuts.

He plays at war. She plays with dolls. What more perfect balance could there be? Everything seems in order. In
their
order. Are adults not but puppets at their disposition, role players for balls and children’s battles?

“The king touches you, God heals you”

The infanta demands explanations. The king’s coronation, the great event that she’s been passionately anticipating, will take place without her. She won’t go to Reims. Mariana Victoria sobs loudly. At Versailles, the coronation is all anyone talks about. Preparations for it constitute the only occupation of the moment. The infanta is shown the clothes the king is supposed to wear. She touches them, feels their weight. It worries her. She’s afraid her “husband the king” will be exhausted merely by putting on such heavy garments. How is he going to be able to stand and walk, wrapped up like a mummy in those gold and silver capes, and with that crown on his head? There are two crowns, someone explains to her: a massive gold ceremonial crown, called the Crown of Charlemagne, that he’ll wear only briefly; and the other, much lighter vermeil crown, a crown for everyday use … But she thinks that even the vermeil crown is too heavy for Louis’s head. In an aside to the king she says, “That crown, Monsieur, is going to give you frightful headaches,” takes her own head in her hands, and groans. She’s exaggerating and she knows it. “I was just being dramatic,” she says, correcting herself. And together they admire the crown in detail.

On the eve of his departure, the king comes to present his compliments. The infanta is pale and frustrated, but dignified. She adopts the polite tone the king uses for every
occasion. A tone that he calibrates between kindly distraction, frank boredom, reserve, and pointed exasperation. With the familiar blindness of the unloved, she perceives bows as equivalent to kisses, hand kisses to embraces, a kind word to a passionate declaration.

During this particular visit, amid so many fittings and rehearsals for the coronation, kindly distraction wins the day. The king bids the infanta farewell, she kneels, he raises her up and kneels in his turn. The ballet of their love is staged again, as before, unchanging. At supper, the infanta appears cheerful. She eats everything, even the soup, to please the king her father, her mother, and the king her husband. She accepts a second plate so that she can grow faster. But on the day of the king’s departure, she can no longer contain herself. Drums, trumpets, and fifes are deployed to accompany the king on the way to his coronation. Painful music. Suffering pierces the little girl like a skewer. Mme de Ventadour writes:

She weeps with a pillow over her face. The touching passion, now that it appears unshared, leaves the public behind. She weeps. And queen though she may be, her distress isn’t treated with any more consideration than what’s appropriate
for children, whose “great sorrows” elicit laughter from grown-ups; the fillip of an unhappy romance makes her case even funnier.

The king plays the game, or he feels forced to do so. He hastens to write to the infanta. Mme de Ventadour is able to reassure the child’s parents: “Early this morning, mail from the King arrived with a small gift. The letter which he did me the honor of addressing to me is charming for our queen and had she been willing to give it back to me I should have sent it to your majesty.”

When she goes to bed that evening, the Infanta slips the purloined letter under her pillow, not forgetting to respect the place reserved for her husband. The empty place.

The whimpering choir of dolls — trunk shut-ins, muffled mourners — accompanies the king’s fanfare.

With the first little notes, the first presents, the infanta is consoled: “The King my husband wrote to me from his first stopping place I cried very much when he left wherever he goes he will think of me and I of him.”

The fable has regained its rightful place. The king loves her as she loves him — for eternity. And when she finally reaches the age of twelve and is old enough to give France a child, they will love each other the way her parents do, without ever leaving their bed. The infanta asks, “But where will we sleep when the time comes? In the king’s bed or mine?”

She poses this question to Mme de Ventadour, to Marie Neige, to Abbé Perot, her writing master, to her master of
deportment, to her ladies, to her servants. Someone finally answers her: “You will sleep in all the beds, Your Majesty.”

“All the beds in Versailles?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“And the beds in Meudon, Marly, Fontainebleau, Chantilly, and La Muette, too?”

“Yes, you will sleep with the king in all possible and conceivable beds. Featherbeds, greenery beds, hanging beds, floating beds, mossy carpets …”

The infanta smiles.

She has her governess write to her parents for her: “I am waiting impatiently for the King my husband everyone admires him.”

The beauties of the coronation ceremony, the different stages of that age-old ritual, are described to Mariana Victoria. She particularly appreciates this part: a cortege headed by the Bishop of Laon goes to the archbishop’s palace to fetch the king. The Cantor of Reims, wielding a silver baton, knocks once upon the door of the king’s bedchamber. The Bishop of Laon asks for Louis XV. On the other side of the door, the grand chamberlain replies, “The king is sleeping.” Another blow from the silver baton; the request is repeated, receives the same reply. Only after the third request — “We seek Louis XV, whom God has given us as king” — is the door opened.

“So the king’s not still asleep?” the infanta wants to know.

“No. His Majesty is on the bed, dressed in a red satin tunic, but he is not asleep.”

The infanta wonders whether she too will eventually be able to find the magic words that will make him open his door to her. She sees clearly that the king isn’t very effusive; he loves her, but he remains silent. She’d like to be able to change him. She prays for him to become talkative.