Read The Exchange of Princesses Online
Authors: Chantal Thomas
All the deputies have been introduced by the Count de Maurepas, secretary of state, and ushered with the usual ceremoniousness by the Marquis de Dreux, grand master of ceremonies. The infanta grants her audiences in Anne of Austria’s grand study. On the other side of the partition wall, in an as yet undesignated room, the dolls shut up in the trunk beat on it with their nonexistent fists. They demand: (1) to see the light of day; (2) that the infanta be let alone; and (3) a distribution of
horchata
. Their mouths dried out by the journey, the unhealthy air of Paris, and the dust of the Old Louvre, the dolls hallucinate the delights of the sweet white beverage.
Through ignorance or by choice, the infanta remains deaf to those demands. Now she must cope with an entire week of festivities, as meticulously planned as the endlessly repeated compliments.
On Sunday, March 8, from eight o’clock to midnight, the king gives a ball at the Tuileries Palace, in the so-called Hall of Machines built by Vigarani for Louis XIV. The young king opens the ball. The lords and ladies who aren’t dancing sit in the tiers of seats, the lords dressed in cloth of gold and silver, the ladies wearing court dresses and diamonds. Liqueurs and hippocras are served. The infanta wets her lips in a glass of hippocras and makes a thousand faces. Thirty dancers
launch into a
branle
, followed by a
menuet à quatre
and then a contredanse. The king dances every dance. The infanta dances with the king. At the end of an hour, she goes off to bed, despite the beginnings of a fairly spectacular tantrum.
On Monday, she’s feted with a fireworks display in the garden of the Tuileries. The lighting arrangements are magnificent; the Grand Parterre is illuminated by little lamps, and yews sculpted into wooden candelabras augment the light’s effect. The fireworks display seems extraordinary even to the pyrotechnist, who takes fright and runs away.
On Tuesday, the celebrations continue with an immense bonfire and a ball at the Hôtel de Ville. The king, the infanta, the regent, and all the court are there. The people drink to the infanta’s health, again and again. In the Hôtel de Ville, some people throw their wigs onto the chandeliers, a tumult breaks out, the boats moored next to the square serve as bordellos.
Wednesday is a day of rest. Mme de Ventadour writes to the king and queen of Spain. She describes the noise and the splendors that have greeted their daughter in Paris. The infanta, still in bed, is watching the latest additions to her collection while they dance. She has her governess write to her brother:
I got a magnificent reception. I’m delighted that you liked the scented sachet. I do indeed have lots of dolls. I wish you could see their wardrobe and the rest of their pretty furniture. I was very glad to hear that the Princess of Asturias is feeling better.
At this point, the packed dolls foam with anger. They’re still waiting to get out of that blasted trunk and drink some
horchata
. Their mouths are as dry as cardboard. They can’t even salivate when they imagine the almond taste of the exquisitely thirst-quenching, milklike beverage. The chorus of Spanish dolls threaten to set fire to the French dolls, to their pretty furniture and their sweet little changing room.
On Thursday, there’s a Te Deum at Notre-Dame Cathedral, where the infanta touches the hearts of all who approach her. The people want to love her. Witnesses remark on the king’s paleness and fatigue, saying his “face looks very bad.” That evening, the Palais-Royal is illuminated inside and out by white flambeaux and firepots, and another grand ball lasts until the morning.
On Saturday, a fireworks show at the Palais-Royal. The king and the infanta walk together under the arcades and other structures built for the occasion. A painting at the end of the garden represents the Titans, struck by Zeus’s thunderbolt; the two children, the cynosures of the celebration — the king, terribly exhausted, and the infanta, her eyes blinking with sleep — listen to the story of the Titans. The following day, the king and the infanta are allowed to rest, and the regent falls ill. It’s said that he became overheated by his fire in the Palais-Royal, unless it was by his mistress.
At the end of the month, the Duke of Osuna, the Spanish ambassador, hosts a celebration of extraordinary magnificence. He has an artificial rock built in the middle of the Seine, and on that rock, directly facing the balcony of the queen-infanta’s apartment, a temple supported by many
columns. The first of the temple’s four sides represents Hymen, and in his hands two myrtle crowns, which he holds out to the king and the queen-infanta. Ceres, Bacchus, and the Goddess of Peace are painted, respectively, on the other three sides. A ring of boats illuminated by small lamps surrounds the rock. When the king comes out on the balcony, the musicians placed on the boats strike up a triumphal concert, which is the signal for a water-joust between gondoliers. Once the combat is over, the temple is burned, which in turn sets off a fireworks display that lasts nearly an hour. When the grand finale comes, water and sky reflect a thousand flames back and forth. The Seine glitters and sparkles. The little girl, the reason for this blaze, cries out in joy at each rocket, and perhaps also in distress as the temple she had barely time to glimpse so abruptly goes up in flames. She pulls the king by the sleeve and points to the blossoming explosions. If he’d only say something! If he’d make a sign! She insists: “Oh! Ah! How beautiful it is! Oh! Monsieur, look!” She rubs herself against him, gets out of her seat, tries to stretch up to his ear.
At last he pronounces the word “Yes.”
Whereupon the radiant child turns to the courtiers and says, “The king spoke to me! The king spoke to me!”
On the scale of fetes, the infanta has reached the top.
Her fourth birthday is hardly distinguishable amid so many celebrations. She receives letters and gifts from her parents, messages from her brothers, more dolls with sumptuous outfits and furnishings, other toys. The king compliments
her. She hears Mass at his side in the Tuileries chapel. When they leave the chapel, a flight of pigeons takes off, and the king smiles at her. The infanta gathers up that smile like the day’s treasure. It crowns her somewhat disparate collection of gifts.
It has rained a great part of the day, but at sunset she’s able to look out of a window in the Tuileries and contemplate an astonishing set piece of pink-and-gray clouds, shot through here and there with sunbeams. Even more than this, she admires the king’s silhouette as he passes in review the regiment of 160 young people, trained by himself, who perform their soldierly exercises every evening on the terrace of the palace. The regiment is called the Royal Terrace. They see the young king every day. The infanta fiercely envies them. But that’s trivial compared to how she feels about the Guards of the Sleeve, the detachment of gentlemen who never leave the king’s side during a ceremony and whose duty is to keep their eyes on him at all times. Duty? Can there be a greater pleasure?
Returned from his military obligations on the Tuileries terrace, the king shows the infanta one of his treasures, a singular birdcage: a hamper bound together by silver hoops and filled with all sorts of birds. He reveals nothing of his precocious political activities: his creation of administrative entities — the Department of Freshwater Ports and Harbors, of Terrace Trunks and Chests, of Chicken Coops, and of the Orders of the Salon, of the Medals, of the Mustache, and of the Flag, for each of which he has named grand masters, masters, and assistant masters, and dreamed up complex and varied protocols.
The infanta asks to go crayfishing with the king. The matter must be discussed.
In Paris, as on her journey there, she captivates everyone. Mme de Ventadour writes to the infanta’s mother the queen of Spain:
Even after traveling so long, the Infanta has endured all the fêtes perfectly well … She charms everyone, she attends all the celebrations that have been arranged in her honor as if she were twenty years old. She has had one or two little indispositions, but they have not prevented her from going to everything.
Yes, the infanta goes to everything. She goes with all her heart. In her innocence, in a transport of love.
The king also goes to everything, but he puts as little of himself into it as possible. He is not captivated by the infanta; she’s too little, too much of a chatterbox, too exasperatingly cheerful, and the way she’s acclaimed by everyone can only add to his antipathy. Not to mention the fact that she began by taking Mme de Ventadour away from him. But maybe all this is only a bad start, a first impression that will correct itself in time. Maybe, in the end, he’ll be won over like everyone else. Who knows?
The infanta is interested, the infanta is blithe. In the morning, she gets out of bed dancing and singing and hums while she’s being made ready, impatient to throw herself into the new day. She never cries except when she has a bad toothache, or when any attempt is made to curl her blond
tresses. This she unequivocally refuses; there’s no way anyone’s going to touch her hair, or put a nightcap on her at bedtime, or decorate her head with flowers and ribbons and frills during the day. She feels even more strongly about the
bourrelet
, the padded, protective head roll, which she regards as a crime of lèse-majesté. She shakes her hair, bobbing and weaving in all directions like a doe. She was born to support nothing on her head but a crown.
Apart from toothaches and hairdressing sessions, everything’s blissful for the “future queen — infanta”: receiving letters and presents from her parents (“She’s always delighted when Your Majesties and Their Royal Highnesses her brothers are spoken of,” her governess writes), opening trunks, laying out her things, plunging headfirst into her toys (“Rest assured, her trunks are filled with everything she could want, we hadn’t opened them until we reached Paris, having carried with us whatever she needed for the journey”), playing with her dolls, dressing them, undressing them, having them served little meals, receiving deputies, rectors, ambassadors, standing out on her balcony, listening to the boatmen’s cries, watching the boats pass, the tree trunks floating on the Seine, going to Mass in the little chapel adjoining her room, in Notre-Dame Cathedral, in the royal chapel in the Tuileries, or in the churches of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, of Val-de-Grâce, of the Feuillants, of the Daughters of Calvary, of the Ave Maria, of Sainte-Élisabeth … (she visits the different quartiers of Paris by going to their churches), walking in her garden. But the infanta’s greatest happiness is to see the king, and to let others see that they’re a happy couple.
She baptizes the baby doll “Louis.” On the first evening, not having had time to come up with a better solution, she puts the baby doll in Carmen-Doll’s bed (the baby doll doesn’t have a good night). The next day, she requests a cradle for “the dauphin Louis.” She presents him as her son,
their
son. Although she makes no explicit demand, she expects the courtiers to salute their queen and pay homage to her offspring. And they do it. The courtier’s status requires great suppleness, the ability to submit, to bend low before power, to crack your back with bowing, to sweep the ground with the plumes of your hat. The council chamber where Anne of Austria used to hold her audiences is always full of people. They prostrate themselves before the queen of France, they converse seriously about doll-related matters, about mechanical birds, about cockchafers and ladybugs. To what level on the scale of tiny things will she reduce them? At what point will she succeed in turning the Old Louvre into the kingdom of Lilliput? She laughs, acts the clown, plays tag, participates in a masquerade of children disguised as dogs and barks instead of talking for several days thereafter. The embarrassment of the courtiers: Ought they to reply in kind?
The Princess Palatine’s Liberties
In May 1722, the Duchess de La Ferté writes: “I cannot let a day go by without paying court to her. When I have not the good fortune of seeing her, I feel I am missing everything. As I have the honor of being the King’s godmother, she honors
me by calling me her own and does me a thousand kindnesses.” Everyone is under Mariana Victoria’s spell, or pretends to be, but one person alone truly loves her: Madame, the Princess Palatine. The first time she set eyes on the infanta, Madame recognized the specific genius of the little girl, at once so “lofty” and so funny, and felt immediate and total affection for her. She doesn’t find it hard to prefer the child to her own grandchildren, with the exception of Mlle de Beaujolais.
The Princess Palatine is seventy years old this spring. She describes herself without mercy:
I have always been ugly, and the smallpox has left me even more so; moreover, my waist is monstrous, I have the shape of a large cube, my skin is of a reddish color mottled with yellow; I am beginning to go gray, with salt-and-pepper hair; my forehead and the skin around my eyes are wrinkled; my nose is as crooked as ever, but now festooned with smallpox scars, the same as my cheeks, which are sagging; I have heavy jowls and rotting teeth; my mouth too has changed somewhat, having become bigger, with wrinkles at the corners.
She knows she’s very ugly, and she feels very old. She’s too fat, she has trouble breathing, her feet are swollen. Lately, at any hour of the day, she has a tendency to fall asleep. In the past, that would happen only at Mass. She’d snore heartily, sitting at Louis XIV’s side, and he would elbow her awake. The Catholic liturgy and its Latin chants, with their long, drawn-out vowels, had on her the effect of a sleeping potion. So much so that she’d attend a religious service as a cure for insomnia! But even in her present state, ill and weak,
Madame stands out as the woman with the strongest personality in the Regency period, and perhaps even (with her enemy Mme de Maintenon, whom she qualified variously as “old drab,” “old dunghill,” “the she-monkey,” “the hag”) in the reign of Louis XIV. She was certainly the most touching, because her life was a constant battle from the age of nineteen, when she was married to Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV, and delivered up to the Sun King’s meticulous tyranny, to his courtiers’ mean-spirited nastiness, and to the hostility of her husband’s several catamites, who dreamed of a thousand different ways to do her harm. At first she had to fear being poisoned, as Monsieur’s previous wife certainly had been; then, after that fear faded, she concentrated her energy on staying alive, not only physically, but also in the full spiritual and moral sense, determined above all else to be free. It was a hopeless battle. One day the Princess Palatine utters this harrowing observation, or cry: “They have clipped my wings!” Far from admitting defeat, she keeps on fighting. She resists until the end, with what remains of her spontaneity, her courage, her intelligence. And what remains is immense.