Read The Exchange of Princesses Online
Authors: Chantal Thomas
Despite the importunate crowds, the visits, the audiences, the introductions, the galas of every description, the infanta hasn’t failed to notice Madame. She’s intrigued by this comical personage. Maybe her initial reflex was to hide her eyes, but with Madame’s first visit to the Old Louvre, the infanta discovers in the princess the grandmother she’s never had and falls madly in love with her, while at the same time the princess declares herself wild for the infanta: “Our little Infanta is undoubtedly the prettiest child I have ever
seen in all my days. She has more intelligence than a person of twenty, and yet she retains the childishness proper to her age: the result is a most pleasant mixture.” Furthermore:
I do not think it would be possible to find a nicer and more intelligent child in the world than our little Infanta. She makes observations worthy of a thirty-year-old person. Yesterday, for example, she said, “They say that when someone my age dies, they are saved and they go straight to heaven, and so I would be happy if God wanted to take me.” I am afraid she is too intelligent to live; whoever hears her speak is immediately enthralled. She has the nicest ways in the world. I have won her favor; she runs out into her antechamber with open arms to meet me and kisses me most lovingly.
Madame has to restrain herself from paying the infanta a daily visit: “She is prettier and nicer than ever, and were I to follow my inclination, I should amuse myself with her all day long. But because of my great age, people would think I was entering a second childhood. And so I must rein myself in.”
But at the hunt, or anywhere else, Madame’s tendency is rather to slacken the reins. She limits herself only moderately in her affection for the infanta. She’s filled with admiration for a creature at once so childish and so thoughtful. The little philosopher enchants her, and the infanta doesn’t hold herself back either. She loves to open her arms wide and run to the Princess Palatine, and to invent excuses for kissing her again and again. The old lady writes: “I am in Her Lovableness’s good graces; she makes me sit in a big armchair, takes a doll’s stool, sits down next to me, and says, ‘Listen! I have a little
secret to tell you.’ When I bend down to her, she throws her arms around my neck and kisses me on both cheeks.”
Madame never goes anywhere without her dogs. Mariana Victoria skips along in their midst, hangs from their necks, races them.
The Princess Palatine wants to give the infanta some knowledge of the woods; she thinks it important that the child should feel nature’s superiority over even the most beautiful gardens of the world. She has the coach stop in a moss-covered place. Madame and the infanta walk along a path streaked with sunlight. They lean over a bed of wild violets. The little girl crouches down and picks them one by one, sticks her nose in their golden-yellow centers, explores the tiny tracery of the moss, strokes its velvety softness. She discovers another forest inside the forest, a forest made to the measure of butterflies and ants — a forest made to her own measure. Madame tells her,
I would rather look at land and trees than at the most magnificent palaces, and I prefer a single vegetable garden to a hundred parks adorned with marble statues and water spouts. What is more beautiful than a meadow, what is more moving than wildflowers? Natural things are exciting, they give you energy and ideas.
The two of them gather armfuls of daisies. The infanta lies down on the grass and brushes Madame’s wrinkled cheeks with golden blossoms.
This is her wildflower lesson, her lesson in truth. A short time later, on April 26, the infanta says something
surprising, which the Princess Palatine recounts: “The dear child put down her doll and ran to meet me with open arms. She pointed to the doll and said, laughing, ‘I tell everyone that doll is my son, but I’ll tell you the truth, Madame: it’s only a baby made of wax.’ ”
Madame often betakes herself to the Louvre; the infanta, for her part, loves to visit the old lady at her residence in the Palais-Royal. Eight spaniels (of which Unknown Queen, the mother of the irreplaceable Titi, is the favorite) cohabit with her in her salon, along with a canary and a parrot. Every time someone enters and goes to pay his or her respects to the mistress of the house, the parrot cries, “Put out your paw!” The infanta laughs so hard she gives herself a stomachache.
One day the princess surprises the little girl by inviting her into her cabinet of curiosities. It’s filled with such treasures as butterflies mounted on boards, stones, snakes preserved in jars, microscopes, glasses for observing the stars and solar eclipses, coral shrubs, giant sponges, an elephant’s skull, a group of stuffed ostriches … The child goes from one odd thing to the next. Not long afterward, Madame asks her what she liked best.
“You, Madame.”
The Infanta’s Garden
The Princess Palatine lends her voice and her gaiety to celebrate everything that grows and flourishes freely. And she proves to be a vital resource for the little queen, who’s surrounded by grown-ups determined to put on an act, for one
another as well as for her. After a visit from Saint-Simon, the child writes to her parents:
The duke de St. simon, My dear Maman, gave me the pretty things you and dear papa sent me. I kissed them a thousand times with affection and joy. I made a gift of the nicest things to the king, because he gives me something precious every day, and because we love each other very much. Cardinal de Rôhan came to dine recently with maman de ventadour. she told me it will be the cardinal who will marry me to the king. Mme de soubise plays me tricks sometimes: but she always has a hundred charming things to say to me, and she told me about the finery I shall wear on the Wedding day, and what will happen in the church, at the banquet and at bedtime, and the cardinal said he will also take charge of baptizing the dauphin. We laughed and laughed. The entertainments do not rule out serious occupations. There are hours of catechism lessons and other lessons, too. I always remember what you recommended, and I love you, my dear maman, very tenderly, and infinitely more than I can say. (Paris, May 17, 1722)
“We laughed and laughed …” The conspiracy of compliment givers and flatterers, all of them more or less always lying, goes forward: “The king adores you, you will form an incomparable couple and have many children.” Any signs of reticence are denied.
Mme de Ventadour writes:
Our little queen is thriving, but the night before last, after being perfectly gay all day long, she coughed a great deal, and in the morning she seemed a little upset. Then came a fever,
accompanied by so much drowsiness that she slept fourteen hours in a row, and by yesterday morning her fever was completely gone, leaving only an admirable appetite. Because of this, Madame, we shall not leave for Meudon until tomorrow, so that we can be sure enough days have passed and that we need not fear a return of the indisposition; there is certainly no sign of a relapse.
Her intelligence and good sense charm everyone. The King came to see her with a good deal of affection, but ere he came she was waiting for him so impatiently that I took the liberty of sending him a message urging him to come presto, for he had resolved not to come until after the formalities, but I saw how much pleasure his coming would give our little Queen, and he came straightway, and was most gracious in his manner, and our Queen responded in such a way that we were surprised at all she understood. I cannot stop myself from telling Your Majesty that the night she had the fever, seeing that she had awakened, I rose, desiring to give her some bouillon, and sat undressed beside her bed, and she immediately told one of her women fetch a quilt for maman so she won’t catch cold. There has never been a child like her.
P.S. My dear maman, i been a little sick, but it is nothing. I am feeling very fine and packing my doll trunks for Meudon.
The King came to see me yesterday and loves me well, to my grate delite. He sends you and my dear papa his best wishes and kisses your hands, your feet, and your whole persons.
Mariana Victoria
She doesn’t forget anything about Spain and Spanish and speaks French at first timidly but then “wonderfully.”
She also amuses herself by saying some Italian words she’s learned from her mother. Her pleasure in speaking, and in speaking several languages (among them Small Dog), makes the fact of the king’s silence all the more glaring.
The infanta’s at her best when the king’s visit is announced and they walk together in her garden. The onlookers drown in emotion. Mme de Ventadour has tears in her eyes: “She took the King’s hand led him into her garden they had a meal just the two of them with no one to assist her … and sometimes [she] let go the King’s hand and went and picked some flowers for him they kissed each other warmly.”
The infanta prays he will come again soon.
One fine day in May, the two children are dressed in white aprons and straw hats. A gardener teaches them to plant tulip bulbs under glass cloches. This takes place in the garden of the Tuileries, not far from the little billiards room built expressly for the king. A few days later, the infanta reciprocates the favor and invites her “husband.” Servants shade the couple under a saffron-yellow umbrella. The king and the queen-infanta approach slowly, as do the select few allowed to share this intimate moment. At the instant when they’re about to take some refreshment in a jasmine bower, an oboe and viol begin to play a duet. “They are sweet enough to eat,” says Mme de Ventadour. The expression is soon on everyone’s lips.
The infanta’s garden, however, the microcosm of her brand-new reign, does not completely enclose her. Various excursions are organized on her behalf, to Boulogne, Saint-Cloud, Meudon, or — as in this case — La Muette. It’s a hot,
sunny day; the infanta is riding in a half-covered calèche, the king on horseback beside her. Normally she would exult in such a situation, but because it’s so hot, she grows concerned for the king. She continues to worry during the night and finally orders that a request be sent to her father, asking him to write to Marshal de Villeroy and tell him to “let the King sit in the carriage with her so that the sun can do him no harm.”
In June the king comes to tell the infanta goodbye. Together they take a last walk in her garden. Mariana Victoria panics. What can this mean? Is she going to stay here alone while the king lives at Versailles? The king, as always, is polite and hurried. He can’t stay long. A great many people have come to bid him farewell. He’s extremely busy with preparations for his departure. She doesn’t want to cry in his presence, but as soon as he’s gone, she throws herself on the ground and sobs.
The king returns to Versailles on June 15. It’s been decided that the infanta will join him in two days. She can breathe again. The Princess Palatine, for whom visiting her in Versailles would require a much greater effort than going to the Old Louvre, hides her irritation. She doesn’t want to dampen her young friend’s joy. The infanta’s entourage is disconsolate: “I am indeed vexed,” Mme de Ventadour writes to Spain, “that Cardinal de Noailles is making us go to Versailles, we were beginning to settle into the Louvre most comfortably, for the Queen could walk out into her garden from her cabinet and had a beautiful terrace on the riverbank.” Her garden, the infanta’s garden, that marvelous
place made entirely to her measure, the dazzle of her first spring in France, her fairyland of perfect love — Mariana Victoria leaves all that behind without regrets. She has but one thought: to rejoin the king.
On the morning of her departure, amid a great confusion of trunks and furniture, M. le Duc comes in unexpectedly. He desires, he says, to assure himself that everything is in order. What order? grumbles Carmen-Doll. She too was “most comfortably settled in” and loved to hail the boatmen from the balcony. The infanta takes refuge in a corner and watches the terrible fellow bustle about like a madman, surveying what was once her domain. His presence paralyzes her. She whispers to Carmen-Doll, “The one-eyed man has the evil eye.”
Did the one-eyed man hear her? In one giant step, he’s looming above them, he raises his arm as though to crush them. His shadow covers them completely.
La Quadra’s Bouquets
In those days, Death was mowing left and right. At the slightest sign of weakness, he came a-running. People with that monumental scythe hanging over their heads tended not to waste a minute. There was no time for uncertainties and long apprenticeships. No time for adolescence, which provides a sort of vacant lot for experience. With luck, you moved directly from childish weakness and the traps that beset it to adulthood, and then you had two major tasks: work and reproduction. Work: for the poor, it began when a child was capable of standing upright. Reproduction: for the poor as for the rich, it was a matter to be decided by nature. At around twelve or thirteen, a girl reached childbearing age and was therefore marriageable.
The Princess of Asturias has passed her twelfth birthday, and her illness seems to be truly over. Her head has returned to its normal proportions, her skin eruptions have vanished without a trace. She takes little care of her appearance herself,
but she does let her ladies-in-waiting fuss around her. As unamiable as ever, she often shuts herself up with her women. It’s thanks to them that she learns Spanish and, perhaps while they’re playing with the words together, discovers gaiety. Hers is a spirit bound to clash sharply with the sinister duennas in long black dresses who have been charged with her guidance. Fairly quickly, the princess starts to exist in two registers: one of them, the one she shows to the Prince of Asturias, to Philip V, to Elisabeth Farnese, and to the court, is her old self — glum, uncommunicative, sulky, and made still worse by her present circumstances; the other is her new self, mocking and insolent, which appears only when she’s in the company of her women. They are twenty-seven in number, and they’re by no means all as wild as her three favorites: La Quadra and the two Kalmikov sisters, twins who have a gift for hysterical laughter. The spontaneous lessons she receives from her ladies make up her entire education. She sees no dancing masters or singing masters or writing masters; and should such persons be assigned to her, she’d have no qualms about snubbing them. The only master she accepts is a “master of equitation,” and she proves to be assiduous in her riding exercises. Philip V sees this as a good sign, as he himself never feels right except when he’s on horseback — on horseback or in the conjugal embrace. Don Luis gives his bride a phaeton and six little black horses. Every day she gallops up and down the paths of the Buen Retiro and makes some sensational entrances into the courtyards of the convents she visits.