The Jesuit in Spain and the cardinal in France compete in rosy-colored depictions. The Jesuit, because he’s blinded by the conviction that God’s order and the order of the realm necessarily entail admirable, well-behaved personages, and the cardinal because he works with a cynical duality that allows him to report in all tranquillity the opposite of what he sees with his own eyes.
The Anguish of El Escorial
It’s true, Louise Élisabeth blithely chatters with her ladies in their language. The evening before they leave for El Escorial, all these girls are in a state of excitement that makes them especially noisy. They’re celebrating summer and their departure. The two Kalmikov sisters, their blond hair disheveled, give Louise Élisabeth fandango lessons. Dancing the fandango is just as easy as speaking Spanish, they tell her, trying to overcome her reticence. La Quadra has got hold of a guitar. And how about wine? There’s no wine? Louise Élisabeth sends a couple of her companions to the kitchens to fetch some, but when her door is abruptly pulled open, it’s not by ebullient young girls carrying pretty carafes but by the extremely haughty Mme de Altamira. The high spirits dissipate at once. In the frightened silence, Louise Élisabeth keeps on dancing; her snapping fingers make a dull, cold sound.
“El Escorial is a monastery, a place of prayer — a quiet place. Their Majesties do not deem it proper, Madame, that you should be accompanied by your ladies-in-waiting. You will find the necessary services already in place.”
“And the prince my husband, what does he deem proper?”
Mme de Altamira withdraws without responding.
They leave at dawn for the three-and-a-half-hour trip from Madrid to El Escorial. The Prince of Asturias’s coach is occupied by Louise Élisabeth, Mme de Altamira, and Father de Laubrussel. The infantes and their tutors are in the following coach. They traverse the hard-packed earth surfaces of Madrid’s few broad avenues. The thoroughfares are already clogged with vehicles, flocks and herds of animals, carriages, sedan chairs, donkeys laden with enormous bundles, street vendors, beggars … The prince is silent, as is his wife. Mme de Altamira is dozing. Only Father de Laubrussel is in a talkative mood: “What city can compete with Madrid? What capital can boast of being greater?”
“Paris.”
“I meant, my dear princess, more Catholic. Look at all the churches and monasteries and convents, look at all the spires! Madrid is literally bristling with them! What a joyous sight for the eye and for the soul! All those crosses pointing up to heaven! My God, I thank thee!”
Louise Élisabeth would like to sleep, tries, can’t, resigns herself to contemplating the harsh landscape, the shriveled oaks that come into view as they exit the city. Nothing to see, she observes. And she closes her eyes again so that at least no one will speak to her.
She must have fallen asleep. The sun is blazing, and the air feels almost as hot as the air in Madrid. Her throat tightens at the appearance of an enormous edifice of gray granite, isolated in the middle of a desert horizon. You can see it from far away. Its endless walls, its paltry windows, its surroundings. Like a prison for homicidal highwaymen.
“El Escorial has one thousand two hundred doors and two thousand six hundred windows,” the prince announces.
“Two thousand six hundred windows, and no one standing at any of them!” says Louise Élisabeth.
“You belong to a world, Madame, where one does not stand at windows,” Mme de Altamira lectures her. “Unless, of course, when duty requires one to respond to ovations.”
“Alas!” the prince sighs.
Louise Élisabeth is sorry she woke up.
“A grand edifice born of a grand design,” says Father de Laubrussel. “This admirable royal monastery was built by Philip II, son of Charles V, to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Saint-Quentin.”
“A victory against whom?” Louise Élisabeth asks without thinking.
“Against the French,” the prince and the Jesuit answer in chorus.
“How jolly.”
“Philip II,” the Jesuit continues, “had another, more pious motive: to establish a royal pantheon.”
“Jollier and jollier.”
An ashen monk is standing at the entrance. Louise Élisabeth would like to go back the way she came. The interior confirms her premonitions. A succession of inner courtyards offers no vistas. The intensely blue sky adds no note of hope but rather serves as a reminder of an inflexible law, Louise Élisabeth confusedly thinks. Meanwhile, she’s made acquainted with the part of the palace reserved for the Bourbons, whose spirit is as contrary as possible to that fostered by Philip II. But like the blue sky, the embellishments — the tapestries and silken carpets, the scenes of shepherds and shepherdesses, the painted or fresh flowers — all leave intact (where they don’t exacerbate it) the prevailing severity.
Their Majesties at Valsaín maintain a daily correspondence with the Prince of Asturias. The king writes: “I was well pleased to read in your letter of yesterday, my dear son, that you have arrived without incident at El Escorial, and I await news of your hunting …” On the same page, at the end of the king’s letter, the queen repeats, with very minor variations, her husband’s words.
The prince replies: “This afternoon after dinner I missed a rather fine fallow deer and we saw five very big deer, two fine and two others passable, but I was unable to get a shot at them …”
“I share your distress at the ill success of your first hunt, my well-beloved son, but perhaps you have been able to compensate for it today …”
And indeed there are good days that compensate for the bad: “I returned from today’s hunt with three deer. Let me tell Your Majesties everything that occurred …”
Philip V replies, “I am delighted, my well-beloved son, to learn of your fine hunting yesterday …,” and Elisabeth Farnese corroborates: “I am infinitely delighted by the fine hunt you enjoyed and hope that it will be followed by many others.”
While the prince hunts, Louise Élisabeth goes horseback riding. She ventures farther and farther upon the slopes and folds of the Sierra de Guadarrama. Taking risks distracts her. She urges her mount through masses of fallen rocks and forces it to jump over crevices. Until one day her horse slips and sends her flying, and she strikes her head on a rock. She bleeds a great deal, but the wound isn’t very serious. As the bandage wrapped around her skull makes it look deformed, she thinks that her head is, once again, a fright. Immobile, her arms and feet covered according to Spanish custom, she lies with her eyes fixed on the eternal azure. She’s bored with her women. She’s bored with the gossip from Paris. She’d give several of her diamonds to hear the thin voices of the lemonade vendors under the trees of the Champs-Elysées, or the worn, enticing patter of the tarot card readers around the Palais-Royal. She’s bored. She’d give everything she has if only a great bird, one of the vultures or hawks that incessantly trace circles in the sky above El Escorial, would carry her away.
The princess’s accident allows Don Luis to enhance his correspondence with a novelty. “As for other news,” he begins his account, in the same style employed by Their Majesties on the exceptional occasions when an event unrelated to hunting has occurred.
To change Louise Élisabeth’s ideas, and to satisfy his own curiosity, Father de Laubrussel proposes a visit to the Habsburg Apartments, the Austrian part of the palace — a zone long since abandoned to dust and to the vestiges of a pitiless faith. Following a servant carrying a torch, the girl and the Jesuit, she leaning on the priest’s arm, walk down long, constricted corridors that end in chambers of limited size with narrow or even blocked-up windows. Priest and princess feel the sadness inherent in abandoned rooms. The light of the flaming torch picks out a few objects: furniture, beds, desks, screens. They accentuate the effect of emptiness, but the walls, for their part, are overloaded, hung with wooden, ivory, and silver crucifixes, with innumerable painted canvases recalling and glorifying the tortures suffered by martyred saints. Severed heads, lopped breasts, gouged-out eyes, broke
n, torn, nailed limbs, bodies chained, beaten, buried alive, pierced with arrows, devoured by lions … Louise Élisabeth and Father de Laubrussel find it hard to go on. The mute cry of those faces, disfigured by suffering and yet ecstatic, strikes them like a whiplash.
“That one there, the one we keep seeing, the one broiling on a gridiron, who’s he?” Louise Élisabeth asks.
“Saint Lawrence. El Escorial is dedicated to him. In fact, the floor plan is in the form of a gridiron. Do you mean to say you didn’t know that?”
“A torture palace!” the girl cries, and considering her pallor and her injured head, she sees herself as El Escorial’s most recent martyr.
Don Luis comes bearing a gift for his wife: a new edition of Baroness d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales. Louise Élisabeth is happy with the present. They remain silent together, afloat in an atmosphere of unusual calm. Then they hear the sound of carriages, running footmen, Elisabeth Farnese’s authoritative voice giving orders. The charm is broken, the sweet spell vanishes. Don Luis declares that he must go and welcome the king and queen.
“Please stay a little longer. I feel bad in this palace at night.”
“And during the day?”
“Days are easier.”
“Then, Madame, you are in luck, thank God. For me day and night are identical.”
He kisses her hand with his habitual respect and, using one finger, dares to caress her cheek.
VERSAILLES, AUGUST–DECEMBER 1722
A War Game
Before long at the Palace of Versailles, all rumors, illnesses, wicked spells, and scandals have been swept away. The “charming couple” has triumphed over the forces of evil. In the royal chapel, the king receives the sacrament of confirmation from the hands of Cardinal de Rohan, the grand almoner of France, who has first favored him with a most eloquent exhortation. The ceremony takes place in the presence of the regent, the Duke de Bourbon, the Count de Clermont, the Prince de Conti, and a great many lords and ladies of the court. In the afternoon, the king attends vespers. Mme de Ventadour marvels:
August 9. Sire, Your Majesty — filled with piety as you are — would have been pleased to see with what modesty and devotion our King received confirmation yesterday, everyone was moved to tears, and Cardinal de Rohan gave an admirable address. My little Queen was placed somewhat above the King. Her little hands were folded, praying to God for him, and she said admirable things all day long. The Duchess de B. came to pay her court and was astounded by her grace and by the thoroughly charming manners she has when she wishes to please.
Two weeks later, the king makes his first communion. His reverential demeanor arouses praise. He visits several churches in Versailles. The infanta, wearing a sky-blue dress, bedizened with medals and crosses, throbs for joy. The king is celebrated more than she, as one would expect on such an occasion; why would she take offense at that? She knows that the sacrament of first communion is a serious matter, and in her ingenuousness, she’s convinced that everything which adds value to the king redounds to her own.
The regent himself is sensitive to this breath of virtue; he thinks about separating from his mistress so that his immorality won’t act like a gangrene, corrupting the purity of the space in which the innocent couple moves.
Madame comes to pay court to the infanta as often as possible. The ceremonial is always the same. As soon as Mariana Victoria hears the announcement of Madame’s arrival, she drops everything and runs to throw herself in the old lady’s arms. Next, holding her by the hand, the infanta leads her into her chamber. She takes a doll’s chair for herself and directs Madame to an armchair. And then their endless conversation resumes. But in high summer, Madame stays in the Château of Saint-Cloud. She comes less often. The infanta yearns for the days when they were neighbors. It’s been explained to her that Madame will go back to the Palais-Royal in the autumn. Before September’s over, the child starts expecting her, but in October she learns some news both good and bad: at the end of August, Madame suffered an attack of jaundice. She’s back in the Palais-Royal, but her feet are so swollen she can’t move. She lives in her memories. She contemplates a map of the Palatinate, which she has had placed near her bed. A “lovely map,” she writes, “in which I have already done a great deal of roaming. I have already gone from Heidelberg to Frankfurt, from Mannheim to Frankenthal, and from there to Worms. I have also visited Neustadt. My God, it makes me think about the good old days that will never come again.”
Something’s lacking in the king’s education. He needs — without putting his life in danger — experience in war. His mentors could have him observe battles from afar, but France is at peace. Well then, let’s put on a show! Let’s build a fort for the occasion, let’s take some soldiers from the royal battalion and divide them into two groups: attackers and besieged. Let’s call the besieged the Dutch. The battlefield will be at Porchefontaine, right next to Versailles. The spectacle of this imaginary siege attracts a large audience and the soldiers play their parts vigorously, all the while taking care not to injure one another. The king leads the attack. He throws out at random, but very earnestly, such terms as “bastions,” “moats,” “ravelins.” The queen-infanta, from her seat in the grandstand, observes the fighting, shuddering at the sound of cannon fire and trembling if she loses sight of the king, be it only for a minute, as he caracoles at the head of his army. The Dutch hold out just long enough. Toward the end of each day of the siege, the imperious infanta reminds the warriors, “Gentle soldiers, count the dead, spare the wounded.” (At one point, she notices a certain carelessness on the part of the slain combatants lying on the battlefield — some of whom are taking advantage of the opportunity to chew a little tobacco — and sends them a message, by order of the queen: “The gentlemen who have been killed will please conduct themselves accordingly.”) She slips away so that she can be the first to congratulate the king. Victory is approaching, the Dutch are going to waver. Young boys in greater and greater numbers have been arriving to observe the battle. They’ve brought their weapons: slingshots, sticks, stones. These add a touch of reality to the exchanges. A Dutchman whose face has been broken open by a large stone howls at this violation of trust.
Trenches are dug, battle lines come into contact and attack one another, cardboard bombs explode, spies are hanged in effigy, the intrusive young rascals are run off, and the show goes on as it should. Fort Montreuil, the Dutch stronghold, capitulates on September 29 after more than ten days of resistance. Near the end, the fighting grows more intense, and the king is brought to the battlefield at night, too; the wounded are crying out, and in the light of the campfires that add even more drama to the scene, the boy squeezes his pretty gold-and-mother-of-pearl-encrusted bayonet with all his might. Between two assaults, he snacks on muscat grapes and roasted chestnuts.
He plays at war. She plays with dolls. What more perfect balance could there be? Everything seems in order. In their order. Are adults not but puppets at their disposition, role players for balls and children’s battles?
“The king touches you, God heals you”
The infanta demands explanations. The king’s coronation, the great event that she’s been passionately anticipating, will take place without her. She won’t go to Reims. Mariana Victoria sobs loudly. At Versailles, the coronation is all anyone talks about. Preparations for it constitute the only occupation of the moment. The infanta is shown the clothes the king is supposed to wear. She touches them, feels their weight. It worries her. She’s afraid her “husband the king” will be exhausted merely by putting on such heavy garments. How is he going to be able to stand and walk, wrapped up like a mummy in those gold and silver capes, and with that crown on his head? There are two crowns, someone explains to her: a massive gold ceremonial crown, called the Crown of Charlemagne, that he’ll wear only briefly; and the other, much lighter vermeil crown, a crown for everyday use … But she thinks that even the vermeil crown is too heavy for Louis’s head. In an aside to the king she says, “That crown, Mons
ieur, is going to give you frightful headaches,” takes her own head in her hands, and groans. She’s exaggerating and she knows it. “I was just being dramatic,” she says, correcting herself. And together they admire the crown in detail.
On the eve of his departure, the king comes to present his compliments. The infanta is pale and frustrated, but dignified. She adopts the polite tone the king uses for every occasion. A tone that he calibrates between kindly distraction, frank boredom, reserve, and pointed exasperation. With the familiar blindness of the unloved, she perceives bows as equivalent to kisses, hand kisses to embraces, a kind word to a passionate declaration.
During this particular visit, amid so many fittings and rehearsals for the coronation, kindly distraction wins the day. The king bids the infanta farewell, she kneels, he raises her up and kneels in his turn. The ballet of their love is staged again, as before, unchanging. At supper, the infanta appears cheerful. She eats everything, even the soup, to please the king her father, her mother, and the king her husband. She accepts a second plate so that she can grow faster. But on the day of the king’s departure, she can no longer contain herself. Drums, trumpets, and fifes are deployed to accompany the king on the way to his coronation. Painful music. Suffering pierces the little girl like a skewer. Mme de Ventadour writes:
The departure of the King for his coronation touches her as if she was fifteen years old and suffering from a keen and serious hurt and she never wanted to go to the window to see the King’s household and everything else that accompanied him and thrust her fingers into her ears for fear of hearing the timbales.
The Exchange of Princesses Page 15