The Exchange of Princesses (4 page)

After the council, the king takes refuge in his chamber. He curls up in an armchair and sobs. For all that, Marshal de Villeroy doesn’t leave him, but like the Duke de Saint-Simon a little while ago, Villeroy feels embarrassed at the sight of his king in tears. He feels as though he were committing a sacrilege. And like the duke, he averts his eyes. He stares at a point in the room. He remains so for a long time, upright and unmoving, frozen by the sound of choked sobs.

At the same time, Cardinal Dubois is in his cabinet, congratulating himself on Louis XV’s acceptance. He immediately
dictates, in the name of the weeping little boy, the following letter to Philip V:

The exultant cardinal adds a personal note for Elisabeth Farnese:

He puts down his pen, congratulates himself again, and sends for his mistress. After a brief interlude, he goes back to work. As in every commercial exchange, transport presents a fundamental problem. In the case of the princesses, who fall into the category of fragile merchandise, the situation is worrisome. The main road from Paris to Spain, the road used by the post, has an insufficient number of suitable accommodations and, being paved only in part, is impracticable for ordinary coaches. There’s not enough time to repair it. Stones will be used to fill the deepest holes, and all along the route, officials will be careful to station workers provided with horses to assist the travelers and their teams. To get them out of difficult predicaments, horses, oxen, and mules will be kept in reserve.

We must imagine the princesses, with their beautiful dresses and their curled hair, their music boxes and their dolls, their decks of cards and their sets of jacks, being regularly pulled out of muddy ditches by workers who complain without stint as they toil. Since they speak in dialect, they don’t mince their words regarding this nuisance of a job, this goddamn princess transit (or in other, more carefully chosen words, those of a colleague of an official named de Tourny in Bordeaux, “This accursed labor for the passing princesses!”). The workers catch pneumonia, slide with their animals in mud, get run over by coach wheels, while the little princesses find amusement in so chaotic a journey and stare in amazement at the filthy faces of all those poor devils lined up there to keep them safe.

Cardinal Dubois imagines nothing of this. His is a political mind. He who desires the end desires the means. His
direction and planning proceed on a much higher plane than the bodies they may affect — and all the more so since the bodies in question belong to little girls! And therefore, in the darkest hours of the night, he dips his pen in the inkwell again and continues: as to the honors that are to be paid to the principals when the exchanges take place, Mlle de Montpensier must be treated as a daughter of France and the future queen of Spain, and the infanta as the queen of France. Finally, he concludes, M. Desgranges, the master of ceremonies, is in possession of “all orders and instructions necessary to arrange what must be done.”

Yes, a brilliant idea, an idea faultless in its symmetry.

“Me, I’m queen of France” (Mariana Victoria)

A messenger leaves the Palais-Royal, gallops day and night, and on September 21 arrives in Madrid, groggy from the heat and the superhuman effort of his journey. He gets down off his horse and staggers. His dispatches, snatched from his hands, contain the news that both propositions of marriage have been accepted, namely the proposed union between the Prince of Asturias and Mlle de Montpensier, and especially the one “which is to be effected between the most high, most mighty prince Louis XV, by the grace of God King of France, and the most high, most mighty princess Doña Mariana Victoria, Infanta of Spain …” Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese weep tears of joy. They read and reread the lovely written portrait of Mlle de Montpensier, concocted with impunity by Dubois:

The king and queen of Spain delay the official announcement to the court and the people until the arrival of the king of France’s ambassador extraordinary, the Duke de Saint-Simon.

However, one person, inasmuch as she is the future queen of France, remains to be informed: the infanta, the “most high, most mighty Doña Mariana Victoria.” Normally, their tutors and governesses bring
los Infantes
to the queen every morning while she is at her toilette. They are also entitled to a second interview of five to ten minutes’ duration at the end of the afternoon, when the king and queen return from the hunt. But today, the infanta’s governess, the Duchess de Montellano, fetches the child shortly after she awakens and escorts her alone to the Hall of Mirrors, which is adjacent to the royal chamber. Mariana Victoria had to drop Carmen-Doll on the spot. She came close to breaking her nose! Having to leave her playmate devastates the little girl. She keeps turning back to look at Carmen-Doll and insists that her favorite must be taken care of in her absence. To be summoned alone, and so early … The child wonders whether she’s done something stupid, whether she might have to do penance. It must have been a serious error, a whipping’s the best she can hope for! She bows so fast that she doesn’t give herself time to examine her parents’ faces to see if they look stern. She’s still at their feet when she hears
a voice muffled by emotion pronounce these historic words: “I do not wish you to learn from anyone other than myself, my well-beloved daughter, that you are Queen of France. I believe I cannot place you more advantageously than in that royal house and in so lovely a kingdom. I think you shall be happy. As for me, so complete is my joy at seeing this great affair concluded that I cannot express it to you, loving you as I do with more affection than you could possibly imagine. Go and tell your brothers the good news, and kiss them tenderly for me. I kiss you too, with all my heart,” he concludes, without making the slightest gesture.

Is the infanta immediately informed that she’s going to live in France in order to receive a French education? Almost certainly not. It’s a secondary matter. Mariana Victoria doesn’t understand her father’s little speech very well. She does grasp, however, that he’s not cross, and that he’s taking a new interest in her. Usually so stingy with his words, he speaks to her, to her alone and to nobody else. She’s his
well-beloved daughter
. And when she dares to raise her head and fix her eyes on her parents, she’s shocked to see on their faces an expression completely new to her! They’re holding hands, her mother as always on her father’s left, and their countenances are radiant with respect. This confuses their well-beloved daughter, their only daughter, their Mariannina, Her Majesty the Queen of France. She makes another bow, backs up, is gathered into the Duchess de Montellano’s arms. Her father and mother are still close to each other, conversing in their customary hushed voices. Once her feet are back on the floor, Mariana Victoria is eager to return to her favorite doll. But Señora de Montellano leads her in
another direction. She whispers to the child, “As His Majesty your father told you, you are to announce the good news to your brothers.” And so Mariana Victoria, who is tiny, blond, and pale, a small vision of light in her ample morning dress, takes a few steps into the salon where Don Carlos, age five, is in the middle of a violin lesson under the direction of the Venetian master Giacomo Facco. The boy stops playing, ready to make fun of her. In her shrill little voice, and with her very clear enunciation, she says to him, “Me, I’m queen of France,” and then dashes away, leaving Don Carlos to his surprise. She goes into the room where the youngest infante, Don Felipe, barely a year old, is sleeping. She leans over his bed and shouts into his ears: “The queen of France!”

“
All
your brothers,” the governess clarifies.

Influenced by her mother, Mariana Victoria considers only her mother’s sons as her real brothers. Her half-brothers, the sons of Maria Luisa of Savoy, Philip V’s first wife, receive a cold upbringing and are relegated as much as possible to the status of foreigners. Their endless sorrow at having lost a universally adored mother is rendered yet more painful by Elisabeth Farnese’s meanness toward them.

On her way to her half-brothers’ apartments, Mariana Victoria has the impression that the day has reversed itself and that she’s walking into the night. Narrow corridors. Closed doors. No sound. Besides, Don Luis’s door doesn’t open. She’s told that the prince has gone out. As for Don Fernando, eight years old, the stepson most harshly treated by his stepmother, he rises from his little desk, where a candle is burning in the middle of the morning, and salutes smartly. Don Fernando is still in mourning, not just for his
late mother, but also for the recent death of his elder brother by one year, his dear Don Felipe. Philip V also suffers from this loss, but he forces himself to suffer in silence. Don Felipe, son of Maria Luisa, is dead, but Don Felipe, son of Elisabeth Farnese, is alive.

Back in her room, Mariana Victoria finds Carmen-Doll turbaned with bandages and lethargic, but with a crown on her head. She cradles the doll, consoles her, plays with her crown. Carmen-Doll comes around, recovers. She moves her red lips, and now she’s the one who sings for the infanta. She sings the child’s three names, Maria-Anna-Victoria. “Victoria” stands out joyously.

Festivities on the Horizon

Louis XV roams through the rooms in the Tuileries Palace, which has remained practically unchanged since his great-grandfather Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles. The boy-king pets his cats, gazes at the park, fishes in his pond, participates in a miniature hunt organized just for him, plays war games by himself. He tries to avoid the thought of his proposed marriage. His chance to dream about his future has been taken away. It’s been decided for him. But why wouldn’t he love the infanta of Spain? Why not, after all? He could begin by loving her as a little sister or cousin (she is in fact his first cousin; their paternal grandfather was Louis, the grand dauphin, eldest son of Louis XIV; the pope, thank God, has signed the dispensation for consanguinity) and after years and years — nine years, to be precise — love her as his wife. He could also, just as easily, remain uninterested in the whole business. A marriage? How important can it be? That’s the attitude expressed by his best friend, the
Duke de Boufflers, who’s recently been married. “And so I presently have a wife, but it will be a long time before I can sleep with her,” he told the king with an air of detachment. As for the king, he sees only the shame of having a baby for a wife. He sulks. He speaks to no one except the woman he calls Maman Ventadour, his governess, from whose care he was removed at the age of seven, when he “passed to the men.” Nonetheless, he dines with her in her apartments once a week, and she continues to be his
maman
. With her as with everyone, he’s most often silent, but in his turmoil he confides to her the reason for his chagrin. Mme de Ventadour, instead of reacting with her usual affection, seems unsympathetic and ill at ease. After the boy leaves her, he’s seized by a feeling of intense loneliness and his suppressed anger gnaws at him. When the Duke of Osuna, the ambassador extraordinary of the king of Spain, has a private audience with Louis XV, the boy neither smiles nor speaks. A pastel portrait of the infanta is held up for him to see; he averts his eyes. Louis XV takes no pleasure in looking at girls, whether big or little, whether in pictures or in the flesh. And least of all this girl, with whom he is pledged to live together until the end of his days.

For reasons of policy, the regent doesn’t want the two marriages to be made public at the same time. The king’s is announced first, and then Mlle de Montpensier’s, even though the actual order is the reverse. The regent’s enemies are enraged. The Parisians make jokes. There are festivities on the horizon, a bright clearing in harsh weather. But the great event that autumn, for Paris and for all of France, is
the arrest of Cartouche. The Spanish marriages are a matter for negotiation between the two royal courts and don’t really concern the people, while Cartouche’s incredible audacity, the army of outlaws he’s raised, the shadowy power undermining official authority — all that indeed concerns the people, and inflames them. They follow Cartouche’s exploits closely. Through him, the French take their revenge for their humiliated lives. However, when he’s arrested, they express their satisfaction. Publicly, in the name of virtue, in all good conscience, they desire the death of their hero. In private, they continue to tell one another tales of his high deeds, to dream of his escape, to be certain that his men are going to pick up where he left off and that his fearsome army hasn’t stopped fighting. It’s always festive to see someone punished, and Cartouche, given his stature, will surely receive exceptional treatment — for he’s an exceptional man. The common people aren’t the only ones fascinated by him. Writers and great ladies visit him in his cell in the Conciergerie. Cartouche, his legs weighed down by chains (he calls them his “garters”), laughs at everything, sings obscene songs at the top of his voice, and teaches them to his guards. As thoroughly as his feats of brigandage, his cheerfulness amazes all. The festivities attendant upon the Spanish marriages — what can they offer compared to the thrill to be provided by the public execution of such a criminal? On the one hand, child’s play; on the other, bloodshed.