The Cat and the King

by Louis Auchincloss

  “They’re going to make me marry her!” he exclaimed. “They’re going to make me marry the bastard!”

  “Your father hasn’t consented?” I cried in dismay.

  “No, but he will. The Chevalier will make him. The Chevalier will do anything for money, and Father will do anything for him.”

  “Then you must refuse!”

  “That’s all very well for you to say, Saint-Simon. But would you have refused your father?”

  “If he’d asked me to marry a bastard? Yes! It is probably the only thing I would have refused him. I’d have cut my throat had he bade me to. But to make a match so degrading... never! And I’m not a grandson of France!”

  “Conti’s brother didn’t worry about it,” Chartres pointed out sullenly, glancing at his cousin, who had turned to the great portrait of Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne. “He was the one who started the fashion.”

  “Ah, but he died of the shame of it,” Conti replied, without turning his gaze from the great cardinal. “He is a sorry precedent to cite. I wonder what old Hawkeye here would have said. I think he would have kept the royal blood pure. Look at the history in this gallery! The men who made France great. Guesclin, Montfort, Bayard, Dunois, look at them all, nobles and warriors. Why, the room seems to throb with the muffled sound of their tramping feet! Surely they would not have bowed to the spawn of Montespan and Vallière!”

  Had the mocking note disappeared from Conti’s velvet tone? Was I making a fool of myself in thinking that I could detect even a faint tremor of something like passion in it, passion that he had always professed to consider as not in the best of taste in a society that worshiped the superficial, a society he both deplored and enjoyed? He walked several paces down the gallery and paused before Jeanne d’Arc. “I suppose if this dear lady were alive today she’d ask for the rank of foreign princess, like our silly Lorraine friends. But she lived in a nobler time.” He turned now and walked deliberately back to Chartres. “Believe me, cousin,” he said in his gentlest tone, “your father will bless you for your disobedience. Nobody cares for our blood more than Monsieur. Nobody has cared more for the prestige of our house. To see his only son misallied might be as fatal to him as a bad marriage was to my brother. He may give in to the king out of momentary weakness, but he will repent of it later. And then how he will cherish you for standing out!”

  The double doors at the end of the gallery were now flung open, as is done only for a son of France, and we stiffened to attention. Monsieur came briskly in, his high heels clicking on the parquet. He was a fantastic combination of inconsistencies: dignity and effeminacy; authority and coyness; serenity and nerves. His head, with the huge black perruque, beady eyes and large, aquiline, Medicean nose, rose from a mass of ruff, ribbons and diamonds like an owl’s above a messy nest. The Chevalier, who followed him, had a boy’s face at sixty, a handsome boy’s face, but there was something tight and sinister about that unlined skin. One felt it might suddenly crack, like an aged apple.

  “Have I interrupted you young people in some naughty project?” Monsieur demanded, looking with a malignant gleam from one to the other of us. “I trust my disreputable son is not leading you gentlemen into trouble? You, too, Savonne? Beware of him!”

  “On the contrary, Monsieur, I’m afraid I was boring these young men with a lecture in history,” Conti replied, indicating the Champaigne portrait. “I was holding forth on the domestic policies of the great cardinal.”

  “A very capable man. But people exaggerate his accomplishments. They give him credit for everything that was done in my father’s reign.”

  “May I take the liberty of saying how passionately I agree with your royal highness!” I burst out. “I have always regarded Louis XIII as the greatest of our monarchs! I learned it at my father’s knee.”

  Monsieur cackled merrily. “Don’t let my brother catch you saying so! But it’s all right, Saint-Simon. Your father was a good man and a loyal friend. He told me some funny stories about the cardinal. Do you know that when Richelieu lived here, he used to have apoplectic fits? Oh, dear, yes! He would imagine he was a horse and run up and down the corridors, whinnying and stamping. Such a scandal! The palace would have to be shut up tight. But people would talk. You do your father credit, Saint-Simon. I am sure he would be happy to know that you are so well married and settled.” Here he sighed and glanced at his son. “Would that we could say the same of my boy here.”

  “I shall be happy to marry, father, any lady whom you select.”

  “Whom I select?” Monsieur glanced briefly at the Chevalier, who remained impassive. It was obvious to the five of us that Chartres was implying that, left to himself, without fear of the king, or the Chevalier, his father would never pick a bastard for a daughter-in-law. “And just what do you mean by your emphasis, sir? Do I detect an impertinence?”

  “None whatever. I simply meant that—blindfolded if you will—I shall be happy to take the hand of any woman in Europe who represents your own choice.”

  “Would that not be any woman whom your father named?” the Chevalier put in, with a sneer in his tone.

  “My father is not the head of his family,” Chartres replied impassively.

  “That will be enough, my boy,” Monsieur said testily. “I think you are on the verge of impertinence. Is he not, Conti? We shall cut him off at this point before he dabbles with treason.” Monsieur, with a snort, turned his attention to Conti. “Tell me, cousin, how you select your pages. You have the handsomest at court. The Chevalier and I were talking about it as we came through the courtyard. We heard you were here, so we looked for your livery. And, of course, there it was, on a beauty! We paused to have a little chat with him. Such a clever young fellow. So devoted to you, cousin.”

  As Conti merely bowed in silence, Monsieur turned again to me. He did me the honor to lead me aside for a word in private.

  “Don’t get too mixed up with my boy and his parties, Saint-Simon. You’ve still got a reputation to lose. But if you would care to come to one of my little gatherings here, very select, you know, you would be welcome.”

  We chattered on this way, he increasingly friendly, I circumlocutory, elaborately polite, for though I had no wish to be associated with the inmates of the Palais-royal, neither did I want to arouse the ire of a touchy prince. I knew that his taste was for boys, but as I was smaller than average and young-looking for my age, I was by no means sure of being exempted from Monsieur’s favored classification, and indeed his civilities that day were very warm.

  I made my exit as best I could and joined Conti and Savonne in the courtyard. Before getting into his carriage, the former turned to give me a brief warning.

  “Watch out. The Chevalier has his eye on us. Old Maintenon will know in an hour that we’ve spoken against the marriage.”

  8

  CONTI was right. In less than a week’s time I felt a chill in the atmosphere at court. My old friend, the due de Beauvillier, told me that the king had again spoken unfavorably of my re-signing my commission and had cited the sorry effect of my example on Savonne. And when the latter presented himself at Madame de Maintenon’s he was informed that he would not be received. When he told me this, much shocked and chagrined, I decided to ask Gabrielle if she could find out anything. She was to spend the afternoon at the apartments of “Madame,” the duchesse d’Orléans, playing cards, and I waited in the vestibule until she came out. When she did so, I took her for a stroll to the Basin of Latona, where she confirmed that I was in the bad books of the Maintenon. Madame, who was passionately opposed to her son’s marriage to the bastard, had as good as told her so.

  “She said you were in her good books, anyway,” Gabrielle added. “Not that that does us much good. Poor lady, nobody listens to her;

  “But everyone’s against the marriage!” I exclaimed indignantly.

  “Yes, but they don’t do anything about it. And then there’s this business about Madame Guyon. Did you know she’s been sent to the Basti
lle?”

  “My God, no! Why?”

  “The king’s confessor has persuaded him that she’s a Jansenist, and she’s shut up until a clerical commission can study the case. Of course, Madame de Maintenon dropped her like a hot potato as soon as she picked up the first whiff of her ill favor.”

  I whistled. “So that’s why poor Savonne found her doors shut. It seems a bit hard, considering that he only met the Guyon through her.”

  “No, Madame de Maintenon is perfectly consistent. Anyone who met the Guyon only in her apartment is all right. But Savonne met her twice more—at the duchesse du Lude’s—after the wind had changed.”

  “I see. These are the distinctions on which our lives depend! But I think I had better somehow explain Savonne’s innocence to the king.” I paused, but Gabrielle said nothing. “Don’t you think the king should know how Savonne got into this?”

  “Suppose you speak to Monsieur.”

  “Monsieur?”

  “If Savonne is really in trouble, it’s not over Madame Guyon. It’s over the marriage. What I think you should do is give Monsieur a hint of the price you’re all paying. He likes you. And he has to be basically on your side about the marriage. He can’t object to your wanting a proper match for his own son, even if the king forces him to consent to this one. So, if we lose, and Chartres has to marry Mademoiselle de Blois, he can make your peace with the king.”

  I had to admit that this was shrewd, even if it struck me as a bit ignoble to make personal plans for shelter in the event of the wreck of a noble scheme.

  “But Monsieur’s so volatile,” I objected. “Everything depends on who’s last been with him. And where.”

  “Where?”

  I placed a protective arm about her waist. “Ah, my innocent, we mustn’t peek too closely into the private life of our sovereign’s brother.”

  But my wife’s demure little smile did not in the least convey the innocence that I had assumed. “You mean what Chartres refers to as ‘Papa’s little weakness’?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  “Is it not a loyal wife’s duty to know what goes on in court?”

  I sighed. “I suppose so. But I hate to have your pure little mind contaminated with such filth.”

  “My ‘pure little mind’ can take in worse than that. Be sure when you go to Monsieur that the Chevalier is not with him.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “Do you think it’s safe for me to be alone with Monsieur?”

  Gabrielle’s smile showed a new sophistication, of which I could not quite approve. “Oh, I guess you can take care of yourself.”

  “Even against the fluttering hands of royalty? I can hardly knock down a son of France.”

  But she continued to smile as if we were consciously playing a scene. “A loyal subject must suffer many things,” she said demurely. “I’m sure there’s a dispensation under the circumstances.”

  Something tore in my heart, and the sky seemed as suddenly dark as if the clouds had been pulled shut by frantic hands.

  “You mean that I should... should...!” I paused, gasping.

  “I meant nothing at all,” she said quickly.

  “But you did!” I almost shouted. “You think I should let Monsieur bugger me!”

  My wife paled, and her eyes flashed as I had never seen them flash. “Sir!”

  What could I say? What could I do but apologize? For a few minutes I thought I must have offended her so deeply that there could never again be a question of true intimacy between us. And, then, in another flash, I saw that I was forgiven. Yet it struck me that Gabrielle’s quick return to her normal demeanor of self-containment might mean that she had not been really upset at all, that she took these things for granted and that I, poor ninny, was just someone to be discreetly handled. And if that were so, how could she truly love me? Did she regard me as a task to be performed, the usual silly ass of a husband that a helpless girl found herself married off to, one who had to be cajoled and manipulated so that she and her children might rise in the world and not be buried in the avalanche induced by his blindness? Did I not know about those cynical mothers who warned their daughters in the cradle about the “myths” of honor that men so crazily cared about?

  Gabrielle now proceeded to make matters even worse. She tried to relieve our tension with a silly anecdote. She told me that Imbert de Torrence had solved his problem with Monsieur by letting it be known at St. Cloud that he had a contagious skin disease!

  At this, I left her without a word. I found myself walking down the Royal Alley to the Canal, and from there into the woods. When I turned back at last it was beginning to be dark. As I came out of the forest it occurred to me for a moment that I was lost, but then through the trees I caught the glint of water and realized that I was near the edge of the Canal at the bottom of the “green carpet.” As I approached the Basin of Apollo and then started to circle it, I had a curious sensation of being drawn along by the marble border. It was as if some long tentacle of Le Nôtre’s landscape gardening had reached out to recapture me from the tangled wilderness and was now handing me to another tentacle, and then another, so that I was lifted from alley to alley, across grassy swards and graveled paths, up steps, past fountains and over terraces, the patterns becoming more meshed, more rigid, more complicated as I proceeded, until I was delivered safely back to the heart of the great palace itself.

  I did not see Gabrielle at the jeu du roi. She had gone to our rooms. But I knew now what I had to do for Savonne. After the supper, I stepped boldly forward, as the king rose, to show that I requested a word. What was my dismay to meet the full glare of the royal countenance in terrible anger!

  “You quit my service, and now you wish to run my court! That will do, sir! I have nothing to say to you!”

  He moved on, and I stepped quickly back. But the place that I had occupied might have been scooped out of an iceberg. I felt all around me at once the mortal chill of my disfavor.

  9

  THE DAYS that followed only confirmed my disgrace. It was an appalling experience to be out of favor with the king at Versailles. You saw it reflected in everybody’s behavior, from the way your valet handed you your blouse to the way Madame de Maintenon looked through you as she passed you coming out of chapel. Some of it might have been your imagination, but most of it was not. For Versailles was the king’s home as well as his palace; his moods quickly permeated its hundreds of galleries and apartments. We were like schoolchildren under a strict headmaster whose presence was felt everywhere.

  Savonne, too, was in trouble, and I advised him to get out of court and go to his mother’s in Anjou until the Guyon affair blew over. I even found that I could sense a difference in the attitude of so staunch an old friend as the due de Beauvillier. He advised me to re-apply for my old commission!

  What turned my disgrace, however, from a bleak desert to what was almost a verdant garden was Gabrielle’s attitude. It was as if she welcomed it as a chance to make up for having shocked me. A man must have an ally if he is not to perish in the void of royal disfavor. The feeling of being utterly alone, a bell without a clapper surrounded by noise, a single current running against the ocean, can be unbearable. But if there is a hand to squeeze your own, an arm to be slipped under yours, a sympathetic murmur in your ear, you can face the world. Gabrielle seemed to have waited for adversity to show what her true mettle was.

  “Of course we’re going to the reception tonight! Do you want people to think you’re cowed?”

  Never a word about the fatal consequences of my failing to heed her advice! Never a syllable about my unjust indignation! Almost simultaneously with my first doubts about Gabrielle came the flood tide of my reassurance. I was actually a happy man in the crowded rooms that night.

  Chartres was there, brooding as usual. I joined him in his corner and asked if there was any news about his marriage.

  “I had a talk with my ‘bride’ today,” he replied with a sneer. “Or rather she ‘received’ me, at Madame
de Maintenon’s. For don’t think for a minute, Saint-Simon, that Mademoiselle de Blois shares your low opinion of her origin. She believes that the child of majesty outranks a mere nephew.”

  “Even a lawful nephew?” I demanded. It angered me that even a chit of a girl should also reason so absurdly. “Even a grandson of France? And does she consider that she greatly honors you in offering you a mother-in-law who was not married to her father?”

  “Oh, we never speak these days of Madame de Montespan,” he said with a jeering laugh. “We have nothing as vulgar as a mother. We sprang from the brain of Zeus, like Athena!”

  “I suppose it’s Madame de Maintenon who has taught her such arrogance.”

  “Well, if you’ve got to be a bastard, you may as well be an arrogant one. And speaking of arrogance, I hear that Madame la Duchesse is giving Conti the devil of a time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he took my side!”

  I stared at him in surprise. “I thought she didn’t care about her sister.”

  “She may not. But when it comes right down to it, those bastards always stick together.” Chartres now laughed so loudly and crudely that several persons standing nearby glanced around. “Can’t you see poor Conti, snatching a quick one between the jeu du roi and the supper, huffing and puffing away, in terror that Monsieur le Due may barge in and catch them at it? And all the while his mistress of the marble skin, her lovely thighs twisted around his torso, is murmuring in honeyed tones how nice it would be if her baby sister married a real prince!” Here he stamped on the floor with a snort of disgust as his mood changed. “And we men are crazy enough to think these little cunts care about us!”

  “Please, someone may hear you!”

  “And Savonne has taken to his heels. And you’re in the king’s shit house! Let’s hope, anyway, if worse comes to worst, that the little Blois has as luscious an ass as they say her big sister has!”