The Exchange of Princesses

by Chantal Thomas

  And in Versailles, where she in any case lives, does she really exist? Is her existence taken seriously? Her will is rarely opposed, and when it is, she’s willing to recognize that it’s for her own good; so well has she learned the lessons instilled by Mme de Ventadour. The child proudly reports her good conduct to her parents: “I am quite reasonable. I hardly ever get into moods anymore. Everyone loves me madly,” or, “My dear and much beloved Maman, I have been charming all this week,” or again, “To please you, I am as nice as can be.” For those around her, her desires are orders. The infanta’s charm (“everything she says,” “her little ways,” “her endless antics,” in the words of Mme de Ventadour) continues to work, except on the person she adores. There are certainly a few problems in the sphere where she reigns, but they seem insignificant. For example, on the days when she holds audience, her room is less full than it once was. There may be something of a drop, even a noticeable drop, in the general eagerness to see her. It’s that she’s no longer an event, and also that the Princess Palatine’s enthusiastic support of her was infectious: since she found her extraordinary, it was plain that she was. In the courtiers’ eyes, the queen-infanta has been trivialized. She’s still as remarkable as ever, she still seems older than her size indicates, but that’s just the point; some are beginning to worry about her size and the rumor that she’s not growing starts to spread.

  She’s measured more and more often, with less and less deference. Mariana Victoria feels a violent urge to modify the course of things. Wearing an undershirt and a petticoat, she stands barefoot on the floor. She rises on tiptoe under the measuring rod. The second physician thwacks the floor with the wooden rod and brings her back to reality. He announces the verdict. The third physician notes it down. The first physician sums up: same height as last time. The queen-infanta has tears in her eyes.

  “I want to grow,” she says to Louis-Doll. “We must grow.” She gives him a three-point speech on the said necessity and undertakes to find out about magic potions. She invents some herself: decoctions of sand, water, fern roots, peppercorns, and orange blossoms. Carmen-Doll takes charge of producing the potions. Louis-Doll’s job is to taste them.

  SPAIN, SPRING–SUMMER 1723

  Toledo: First Time Alone Together

  The Princess of Asturias, who gets on with no one, gets on with the climate. To unanimous disapproval, she has realized that she has to dress — or rather to undress — according to the temperature. When the first warm days arrive, she can no longer keep still, she demands new activities. She likes the Spanish summer, she likes the scorching air, the breathless nights, and at the first signs of the relentless heat to come, she comes to life. Her health is pretty good. Of course, she suffers constantly from indigestion because of the “vilenesses,” as the Prince of Asturias says, that she stuffs herself with. She never eats anything hot. When she’s supposed to make an appearance at a meal, the excuse she gives is that she has already dined. She eats sporadically, whenever the mood strikes her, which can be at any time. She gorges on vinegared vegetables and salted meats. Afterward she’s dying of thirst and swallows every liquid within reach. Her body makes disgusting sounds. She laughs about them after she’s finished vomiting. These indispositions, for which she herself is responsible, don’t prevent her from growing taller and heavier and gaining energy. This spring she’s wild about gardening, taking walks, and riding horseback. It’s hard to follow her. Some of her ladies drop out. Louise Élisabeth hadn’t even noticed they were there.

  In contrast with his wife’s burst of growth — peppered though it is, after her fashion, with bad moments — Don Luis’s health is by no means glowing. He’s losing weight and constantly catching cold. Louise Élisabeth is no more seduced than she was in the beginning by the gray-skinned young man to whom her father has joined her, but in spite of herself she’s responsive to his love for her, and most of all, she wants something to happen. Never seeing him weighs on her. And the fixed, immovable date of their wedding night, the consummation scheduled for August 25 without any preliminary meetings beforehand, strikes her as absurd. To a French diplomat, she expresses her surprise at the distance established and so strictly maintained between her and her husband. The Frenchman reports to Cardinal Dubois that she asked him, “blushing very much,” how the king was living with the infanta and whether they saw each other often.

  “Very often,” responded the envoy from Versailles, playing his part in the high-level lying. “And there’s no doubt that their frequent interviews have resulted in a perfect understanding.”

  “Indeed, I am sure that the king of France has nothing to reproach himself for on that account.”

  M. de Coulanges explains that Louise Élisabeth smiled when she said that. A sad smile, because she’s comparing her fate to the queen-infanta’s happiness? Or a purely formal smile, because — unlike Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese, who believe what they’re told in the letters from France — she has her doubts? She knows her cousin, and she wonders whether M. de Coulanges isn’t obliged to stick to the official version. However that may be, her conversation with him has an effect. Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese arrange a trip for themselves and the young couple. The reason for the trip is a pious one: the royal family is traveling to Toledo Cathedral to hear a “Mozarabic” Mass, a rarity only to be found in that city. Louise Élisabeth hadn’t had any notion of what an auto-da-fé might be (now she knows; she still has the smell of burned flesh in her nostrils), and she isn’t any more informed concerning the existence of Mozarabic Masses. Makes no difference. At least it will be a distraction.

  The characteristics of the Mass, celebrated in exact accordance with the liturgical forms and practices in use before the conquest of Spain by the Moors, don’t make much of an impression on her. Neither the dances nor the music draws her attention. Masses follow and resemble one another: so many blocks of time to get through, so many somnolent and often frigid hours. The real novelty is that the prince and the princess are authorized by Their Majesties to dine together, just the two of them.

  The dinner goes well. Louise Élisabeth devours hers. She says two or three words to the prince. He eats nothing and contemplates her. He’s absolutely charmed. She doesn’t vomit.

  Frog Fishing

  After their return to Madrid, Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese leave for Valsaín and the prince and princess for El Escorial. She’s going to resume her hazardous horseback rides. He’s going to insist on scouring the terrain, gun in hand, anxious to obtain some good hunting trophies to present to his father. All things considered, it’s not a good season. The prince laments having repeatedly missed his targets; the king reassures him: “One can’t kill without shooting, my well-beloved son, and thus you must console yourself for yesterday’s bad hunting. You will perhaps be able to make up for it today.”

  But the results remain mediocre. “I am vexed, my well-beloved son, that you did not have better partridge hunting … perhaps you have made up for it today by killing some large beast …” And when for lack of anything better Don Luis begins to go frog fishing, the shame is great. For although such hunting delights the princess and the infantes, it does nothing at all for Their Majesties: “If you have been able to kill a stag today, my well-beloved son, or even a fallow deer, I believe it will have meant more to you than yesterday’s twelve frogs.”

  The frog fishing amuses Louise Élisabeth. She and others put on a play, a comedy (Philip V’s comment to his son: “In spite of what you wrote to me in your letter about the comedy yesterday, a half-pound carp would probably have given you more pleasure in fishing …”), and at the end of July, a jeu d’anneau tournant, a rotating ring game, is installed. “I am very glad, my well-beloved son, that you have such a lovely jeu d’anneau tournant as the one you described in yesterday’s letter,” writes the king, immediately followed by the queen: “I was very happy to learn from your letter yesterday that you and the Princess and all the others enjoyed the rotating ring game, and I am quite de
lighted that it is beautiful, desiring infinitely as I do all that can contribute to your satisfaction.” Louise Élisabeth doesn’t have her mother-in-law’s lively pen. As she’s incapable of dilating indefinitely upon racket or ring games, she avoids answering her mail as much as possible. The queen: “When the letters came this morning I wondered if the Princess was indisposed, because we haven’t heard from her at all, even though yesterday was her writing day, but I see from the Duchess de Montellano’s note that the Princess is well, thank God.”

  After the hunts for large and small game, the prince tackles garter snakes. Philip V approves: “I rejoice with you in your destruction of the garter snakes,” and Elisabeth Farnese is even more supportive: “I am very glad that you have destroyed so many garter snakes, because as you know they are no friends of mine.”

  The outside world rarely manifests itself in these inter-palace exchanges; sometimes Philip V mentions the arrival of news from France. Don Luis, for his part, writes to his half-sister Mariana Victoria. Their father passes the missive along: “Your letter for the Queen my daughter, who is very well, will leave with the next mail” (July 11, 1723).

  Besides that, there’s nothing to report.

  MEUDON, JULY 1723

  He Will Never Be Pope

  The drought in France extends its ravages. What storms there are bring no rain; the Seine is very low. In Paris, to breathe is to poison yourself. In the country, fires break out on their own. Flocks of sheep die in place, on cracked, white-hot earth. Branches of trees — those that still have leaves — are cut off to feed animals. Landscapes of stones and skeletons. The peasants have nothing to offer that might appease the wrath of God. They drag themselves along on their knees across the countryside, getting scratches from roadside thorns, flogging and bruising themselves. They chant their guilt and beg for pardon. Priests, their faces turned skyward, their hands lifted up in the torrid air, call for rain. The processions thin out between one wayside cross and another, the hymns break up, bit by bit. There’s not a cloud. Not a drop.

  The peasants, who would like to murder the priests, slip at dusk into witches’ shacks, utter occult formulas, try crucifying victims other than, or rather lesser than, the son of God. The witches thrash about. The peasants support them in their paroxysms. Not a cloud. Not a drop. The distress is total. People turn to the church. People speak to Philip d’Orléans. In this emergency, what’s needed is a remedy of the last resort, a divine intervention. After some tense negotiations (it’s important that the ceremony be regarded as an exception), the bishop of Paris agrees to announce a procession and most importantly grants an authorization (hitherto unheard of) to take Saint Genevieve’s reliquary out of its church and carry it about the streets. Not a cloud. Not a drop. The drought provokes epidemics. The desolation gets worse.

  Cardinal Dubois is not a lovely sight. One can’t accuse him of wearing the cardinal’s purple unctuously. For unctuousness, it’s best to turn to Cardinal Fleury. He’s the incarnation of courtesy and mildness of manner. A constant affability suffuses his regular features, and age has not tarnished their beauty. He belongs to the race of the ambitious who dissimulate their passion. Instead of furiously hurling himself into the melee, which is Dubois’s style, he contents himself with waiting — and with making himself loved. Like everyone else, Fleury observes that Dubois is visibly wasting away. Fleury’s smooth face displays the appropriate level of compassion.

  That Dubois continues to play his part in working sessions is already no small feat. But he rises to heroic levels when he decides to accompany the king as he passes his troops in review. The crowd witnesses the bizarre way the cardinal bumps and jerks while on horseback. Laughter breaks out. The cardinal, will he fall, won’t he fall, the cardinal? He doesn’t fall. But his riding ordeal pierces the anal abscess he suffers from. Once the review is over, he’s put on a stretcher, mad with pain. In keeping with the chasm separating the vision of persons in good health from the vision of those who are ill, the days are long, long gone when Dubois, at the height of his political intelligence, legislated without the slightest concern for the physical consequences of his decrees.

  Using the work of cleaning the Grand Canal either as a pretext or as a genuine reason, the court leaves Versailles and moves to Meudon, where Cardinal Dubois is already installed. Meudon is halfway between Paris and Versailles and therefore much more convenient for Dubois. The cardinal looks like a dying man. He suffers atrociously. He’s finished. He will go no farther, he will never be pope. Bursting with fury, vilely abusing each and every one, Cardinal Dubois goes to his death ranting and raging, flailing about him in a battle long since lost. His conduct is devoid of all panache. “It’s the urchin coming out in him,” some people snigger. Traveling by carriage causes him to cry out, and even from his bedroom cries can be heard, the echoes of his rage at having to suffer and die. Philip d’Orléans and the king take up positions at his bedside so that work can go forward. The cardinal approaches death not as a Christian, but as a worker. Philip d’Orléans and Cardinal Dubois discuss financial affairs, alliances, ministers, and the future. The king, maintaining his habitual silence, peers into his chief minister’s emaciated face and sees there the glistening perspiration, the dark greenish circles under the eyes, the deep wrinkles, the spasms that shake him and send the ink spattering from his pen. The youth is captivated. If every working session were to coincide with the progress of death, politics would begin to excite him.

  At the other end of the palace, at the farthest remove from the cardinal and his final turmoil, Mariana Victoria sits in a rosewood carriage drawn by a single pony and rides up and down the paths in the park. She sings the refrains of the Protestant hymns she learned from Madame.

  She writes — under dictation — to her brother Don Luis:

  My honored brother, no birthday festivities could rejoice me more than the recent proofs of your dear friendship, to which do not doubt that I respond in kind, with the most affectionate sentiments of my own. The King amuses himself marvelously in this place. Hunting occupies much of his time. As for me, when I do not accompany him, I spend my time in most agreeable pursuits. I often visit you in Spain and wander around other countries as well on my map. Nothing is wanting to my satisfaction. I trust that yours too is entire, and that you remember me as much as my kind thoughts of you deserve. I am

  my honored brother,

  your most affectionate sister,

  Mariana Victoria

  Meudon, July 26

  Like Madame, she has enough imagination to travel just by moving her finger over a map.

  Dubois has reached the end. Another stretcher will bear him from Meudon to Versailles. He’s placed in one of those enormous black coaches called corbillards (the name would later come to mean “hearse”) that are normally used to transport a high-ranking nobleman’s servants. Dubois’s corbillard is followed by three vehicles: the first filled with chaplains, the second with physicians, and the third with surgeons. The cardinal is going to die in a few hours, not without first being subjected to a real butchery of an operation, against which he will struggle in vain, reduced to beastly behavior by beastly suffering. Cardinal and chief minister, man of pleasure and subtle politician though he is, he bellows in despair, calling out for some relief or only for a little air, because the August night is stiflingly hot. A storm is prowling around; white lightning streaks the sky. The baleful flashes light up the exposed, muddy bottom of the Grand Canal, where dying fish are wriggling. Philip d’Orléans, who has joined Dubois at Versailles just before his death, returns to Meudon to inform the king. That same morning, the regent appears in the king’s chamber and announces the passing of his chief minister. He then proposes to replace Dubois himself, despite his rank.

  The king says yes.

  Philip d’Orléans kneels at his nephew’s feet and swears the oath.

  MADRID, AUGUST 25, 1723

  Wedding Night

  On August 25, a date that has long been set,
Louise Élisabeth and Don Luis at last have permission to become man and wife, completely. The princess is thirteen years old, the prince sixteen. Exactly sixteen, because the king his father has thought about such things; he has authorized his son to consummate his marriage on the feast day of Saint Louis, which is also the prince’s birthday:

  For the feast of your patron St. Louis, my well beloved son, here is a gift: your wife in the same bed as you. You have experienced that already, I know, but today you may enjoy the additional right of sleeping with her. The right, or rather the duty. Do not forget, either of you: we await an heir. Spain awaits an heir.

  That day — so long desired, fantasized, feared — is incredibly hot. Fortunately, there’s a Mass; churches are cool places. Upon leaving the service, Don Luis feels dizzy. Louise Élisabeth fails to notice. Afterward, they have the day to kill. Don Luis goes hunting. He trips over a root, suffers the beginnings of a sunstroke, and spends the rest of the afternoon playing solitaire. His frustrated desires and the bullying he’s undergone have made him lose his confidence — all his confidence. The intellectual incapacity he’s always felt and to which he’s grown accustomed is complicated by sexual anxiety. Louise Élisabeth, for her part, gorges herself on tomatoes while someone reads stories to her. She bursts out laughing at the cruelest passages, always from tales of kings and queens victimized by curses, of little princesses abducted from their palaces, of princes paralyzed by the spells their wicked stepmothers have cast. “What could be truer?” she asks. “These tales show the world as it is!” Around ten o’clock in the evening, the king and queen arrive at the royal palace of Madrid. Philip V is suffering from an attack of gout. He limps heavily on the parquetry, and he’s in a gloomy frame of mind. The queen, a veteran at dissembling, has no trouble hiding the contempt and hostility she feels toward the young couple — this pair of losers — and silently offers up her most heartfelt prayers for their sterility.