The Cat and the King (9 page)

I at last proposed a rendez-vous. She agreed, but never appeared. The same thing happened a second, a third time. Her excuse was always perfect: her husband had suddenly turned up; a child was ill; the king had sent for her. Nonetheless, I was convinced that she was playing with me. Why else did she laugh so much? No woman who was really in love could laugh that much. Black curls, black sparkling eyes, rouged thick lips, the finest jewels in court—and that laugh—was it not all the very portrait, even a banal one, of female vanity and lightness? Everyone
\new
that Madame la Duchesse had no heart. And, of course, I was in love myself now. Well—I deserved it.

So I told her at last what I thought of her. I broke off. I vowed I was through. As I had expected, she only laughed. But then on the king's weekend at Marly, when I was occupying my pavilion alone, as my wife was visiting her brother at Chantilly, I pulled the bell chord for my valet to dress for the supper, and a strange youth came in.

“I hear you like pages!” she exclaimed with a shout of laughter.

This time I roared as loudly as she. It was all so utterly outrageous, there was nothing to do but accept it.

And then, almost immediately with the union of our bodies came the union of our hearts and minds. It was a glorious, a fantastic experience. Neither of us had ever loved anyone before. Neither of us had ever really much liked anyone before. We had been too full of ourselves, our fears, our nerves. I had had a feeling for my poor mother, yes, and I had deeply admired the Great Condé, but passion was a new thing. And she, unhappy creature, had hardly ever seen her mother as a child, and who ever loved the king but Vallière? And her husband, of course, was a toad. When we discovered each other, it was as if we had found our own private chamber in the crowded court, one with fine, clear windows overlooking gardens that nobody else could see. For that chamber was
us,
and the rest of the world, our spouses and friends and children, the king himself, were not so much unreal as outside, apart.

Oh, I do not mean, of course, that people did not know. That was the extraordinary thing about it. Everyone
knew
that she and I had something that nobody else at court had. It drove my wife and Monsieur le Due wild. Even the king, I think, eyed us with a kind of envy. Our love hung in the air at Versailles, if I may wax poetical, like some glittering golden spangle, turning slowly around, iridescent, fragile. Anyone might have taken a shot at it and brought it down, but nobody did. Nobody dared. Till now.

***

Conti paused here. He seemed to have finished his tale.

“B
UT WHAT
can they really do to you?” I demanded of Conti, in an agony of apprehension as to what his silence foreboded. “What can they do to spoil something that belongs so peculiarly to you and her alone?”

“I haven't told you the worst. They've put my ex-page in the Bastille. They picked him up at the Palais-royal. There's the threat of an ecclesiastical commission to investigate charges of vice.”

“At the Palais-royal! Why didn't they arrest the whole household?”

“Because this is only a
threat.
Like a dirty reaching hand. I had had this crazy idea that I had provided Madame la Duchesse with an oasis in her difficult and dangerous life. And now to have that dirty hand stretch out to sully her, to soil her, through her connection with a man involved with pages...”

“But women don't mind that, don't you know?” I interrupted warmly. “Women are much better than we in keeping things separate. Madame la Duchesse won't
care
what people say.”

“She's tougher than I, you mean? I agree. Even so, I should like to make the occasions as rare as possible when she has to use her toughness. But let me put it on another ground. If the king so desires, he can use this commission in a way to discredit us all. Even Monsieur, if Monsieur won't agree to the marriage.”

“But surely he won't disgrace his own brother!”

“Won't he? You don't know him. The lower the star of the family dips, the brighter his own shines alone. Oh, I don't say that he would invoke the criminal law against me or Monsieur. That wouldn't be necessary. In a vice trial we should simply be pilloried by the pointedness with which our names were omitted. Don't you remember how the poison trials ruined Madame de Montespan without her being a defendant or even a witness? I'm not dreaming this up, Saint-Simon. The Chevalier has been to see me. He's in the pay of the king, you know. Oh, he dotted his
i
's and crossed his
i
's! We must all accept the marriage or a judicial inquiry into the morals of the Palais-royal.”

“You'll sacrifice Chartres to save your own skin!” I cried, in the misery of my disillusionment.

But Conti's patience with me was inexhaustible. “Rather to save the royal family, my friend. I'm afraid you've lost your perspective. To spare Chartres from wedding a bastard, you'd let this scandal sully us all. It doesn't make sense. I'm sorry, but we learn in warfare that there are times for strategic retreat. Chartres' marriage is the lesser of two evils. And I have told him so.”

“I think I had better go back to Versailles at once.” I rose, trembling in my indignation, and hurried outside to mount my horse and ride back to the château. On the way I had the chance to reflect reluctantly that there might be some merit in Conti's position. But it was still his fault to have placed himself in a position to be blackmailed! I wondered if I could ever forgive him.

When I reached the palace and had changed, I found that the king was in council, which was unusual at so late an hour. There was a rumor afloat that a special announcement was forthcoming, and the galleries were more crowded than usual. I passed Monsieur le Due, asleep with his mouth open, on a bench near the council chamber door. Groups of two or three were strolling up and down the great gallery. To my surprise I found Chartres standing by himself in a window embrasure, looking down the Royal Alley towards the Basin of Apollo. When I came up to ask him what brought him to the château, he told me, rather curtly, without turning his head, that he had been ordered there.

“Then it's come!” I exclaimed in dismay. “Your father's given in!”

“I don't know. You've heard about Conti's page?”

“Yes, but we can survive that!”

“Can we?” He turned to me now, and I saw that his face was alive with emotion. There were actually tears in his eyes. “Don't you think my poor father has suffered enough for one lifetime? Do you know what he went through as a younger brother, Saint-Simon? He was deliberately effeminatized to make him less of a rival to the king. They introduced him to sodomites when he was twelve! Yet he was still a better soldier than the king. And when he was married to his first wife, do you know what happened? The king seduced his own sister-in-law!”

“Is that really true?” I asked, allowing my historical curiosity to get, for the moment, the better of my mission.

“He told me so himself! He's been through hell, I tell you! And he's always been the most wonderful father to me.”

“Until now.”

“Well, look at the pressure the poor man's under! First, the Chevalier, who hates me, and now the king, with this buggery business.”

“But the king loves Monsieur. Despite you all, I can't believe he'd expose him. And, besides, if you will forgive me, sir, who doesn't know about your father's life?”

“There's all the difference in the world between a criminal trial and a spat of gossip. Monsieur would be horrified by the conviction of one of his people. It would blow to bits the little temple of fantasy in which he lives. And what about Savonne? He'll wind up in a heresy trial, if he doesn't watch out. And Conti? How will he relish the page trial? He's not known for that sort of thing, as Monsieur is.
Yet.
”

I looked him straight in the eye. “See here, sir, if you think I'm going to change my position about your marriage because of these threats, you are quite wrong. Would you like me to write to the king about it? And tell him what I and the whole court think of this marriage?”

Even Chartres gasped at this. We both looked over to a group of ladies who had entered the gallery with Madame, Chartres' mother. I saw that Gabrielle was among them. She had spotted us immediately and was watching us with her placid stare. Now she smiled as our eyes met, and I felt giddy at the thought of what I had just offered to do. It would be suicide, but a splendid one. Maybe it was time that somebody committed suicide for a principle at Versailles!

“Do you know what, Saint-Simon?” Chartres exclaimed. “I believe you're capable of it. But I'm not worth it, my friend.” He gripped my shoulder. “No, truly, I'm not. And I'm not worth making my father any unhappier than he already is. I'm not worth disgracing Conti and dishing you and Savonne. Bring on the fair ass of Blois! Oh, yes, I grant, there was a moment when Conti was talking—that day in the picture gallery at the Palais-royal—when I had a dim little sense of history and my possible role in it—but it passed. Maybe it was just Conti's way of putting things. He has the devil's own charm, and plenty of eloquence, but sometimes I wonder if he really believes in anything much more than I do. I sense a kind of cousinly despair in those dark damp eyes of his. So unlike yours!
You
believe passionately in everything you say, but you don't make it charming, the way he does. I keep reacting against your thrusting people into all those little cubbyholes. Sometimes I think you and the king aren't really all that far apart. Order, order, order—like all those goddam gravel walks out there.” He turned moodily back to the window.

“Never mind all that!” I exclaimed with heat. “Tell me that you won't consent to the marriage, and I'll be with you. To the end!”

I think for a moment he was moved. We exchanged a long look. And then we realized from the sudden silence around us that a royal usher had approached us from behind. As Chartres turned, the man bowed and told him that his presence was desired in the council chamber. I followed him and saw, through the open door, the figure of the king in his armchair. Beside him I made out the diamonds and ruffles of Monsieur. All was over.

History is made in small moments. Who knows what might have happened had our interchange continued? I do not think more than ten minutes elapsed before the double doors were flung open again and we heard the tapping of the royal cane.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the king!”

I closed my eyes and moved my lips in silent, agonized articulation of the anticipated announcement.

“I take great pleasure in announcing the engagement of Mademoiselle de Blois to the due de Chartres!”

And we were in for yet another shock. The king returned to his council chamber, and the doors were closed behind him. Chartres, who had followed him out, looking shame-faced, now brushed by those coming forward to congratulate him and hurried across the gallery to where his mother was standing, large, square, menacing, a German pike-bearer in the full court dress of a French princess. He dropped to one knee before her and bowed his head. Without a word she dealt him a resounding box on the ear and swept from the chamber.

The tears started to my eyes. I had been critical in the past of Madame. I had even been inclined to sneer at her for her eternal letter writing to her German relatives, her passion for the hunt, her fantastic claims of Teutonic precedence in everything. She had treated me roughly on more than one occasion, accusing me of gossip and even slander. But I had to admire her now. Before the whole gallery, and knowing that she would bitterly offend the monarch whom she so deeply reverenced, she had dared to make this violent affirmation of her disapproval.

Somebody touched my hand from behind, and, turning, I found Gabrielle.

“She's the only man among us!” I exclaimed, with burning cheeks. “The rest of us deserve to be trod upon. After all, haven't we turned ourselves into carpets?”

“Ah, my dear, I know what a grief this is to you. But try to bear it with the courage you showed at Neerwinden.”

“I've dished myself, and I've dished
you,
” I continued bitterly. “And all for what? To see a bastard become a granddaughter of France. What a team our monarch and his brother make! The alliance of adultery and sodomy! The apotheosis of vice!”

“Please, dear, hush.”

But the warning was unnecessary. Even in my wrath I had spoken in tones that would not carry. “We may as well pack our things. Our apartment will be asked for. Not later than tomorrow morning, you'll see. We'd better go to La Ferté. There's no future for us here.”

“On the contrary, there's every sort of future. Now control your excitement for a minute and listen to me. While you have been working on the due de Chartres, I have been working on his bride-to-be.”

I gaped. “On Mademoiselle de Blois?”

Gabrielle nodded. “I think I can say that she and I are good friends. She is really a dear, very sincere and good, if a bit proud. She's not at all like Madame la Duchesse, whom, by the by, she rather dislikes. I have convinced her that you might be the saving of Chartres. She wants to see a lot of us after her marriage, and she has already spoken to her father, who agrees. He says you're the only friend Chartres has who is not totally dissipated. Never fear. We shall not only keep the apartment. We shall be back in favor!”

Well, I hardly knew what to say. That my wife should turn out to be so superior a courtier to myself was certainly a subject for the deepest reflection. At any rate, with a funny little drop in my spirits and a certain flatness of new outlook, I decided that I had, for the time being anyway, to accept the status quo.

“And I thought this was my last day in Versailles,” I murmured.

“Whatever we accomplish, we shall accomplish
here,
” Gabrielle said firmly. We were standing in the middle of the great gallery, looking down on the parterre d'eau. The fountains were playing; they were orange and tawny against the setting sun. It was time to dress for the evening reception.