The Exchange of Princesses

by Chantal Thomas

  The Prince of Asturias is undressed at the door of the bedchamber, where the princess has been undressed in the presence of the queen. When the princess is in bed, the queen escorts the prince to the bed in his turn. The bed curtains are closed. Don Luis feels ill. He can’t get hard. Louise Élisabeth, feeling not the slightest twinge of desire, mutely observes him. They have the sheet pulled up to their chins. Don Luis moves his hand over his spouse at random. He grips a shoulder, grazes her navel. She doesn’t move. He attempts some fondling but doesn’t dare touch her sex. They embrace, and an onlooker might think they like it. It has all the features of a sin. The prince makes the sign of the cross. The princess moves away. He lights a candle. He reflects. They must copulate, must produce an heir. Right, but how? Neither of the two gets a wink of sleep. Toward dawn, the princess, with her back to her husband, begins to hum; it’s a malicious sound, the low buzz of a bee thoroughly resolved to produce no more honey. She bites her nails without interrupting the buzzing in the back of her throat.

  The following day, the princess hastens to return to her quarters. The symptoms of erysipelas are coming back. The headaches, the swelling, the red, deformed face, one enormously swollen cheek. The prince comes to inquire about her health. For a sufficient answer, she shows herself.

  The prince writes to his father:

  I am very vexed about your gout, because I cannot communicate my doubts to you in person, and that is the reason for my writing you: because yesterday evening I told the princess what you had said to me, and she told me that she knew no more than I did about what should be done, because she had been told only implicitly …

  A few days later, he writes again to his father; his note ends with these words:

  … nothing at all; and for the rest, we love each other more and more every day, and I try to make her as happy as I can, I very much wish to see you again and hope that you will soon be well, answer me as soon as possible and farewell until another occasion.

  In any case, he’s chained and bound: in Spain, any spouse who doesn’t share his or her conjugal bed is excommunicated. From now on and until one of the two of them dies, they’re condemned to sleep, or to prevent each other from sleeping, together.

  VERSAILLES, AUGUST 25, 1723

  A Successful Day

  It’s also Louis XV’s saint’s day, but without any conjugal urgency on the horizon. The Feast of Saint Louis goes forward with the usual ceremonies. Masses, congratulations, the king’s music. After having a strawberry sorbet in the Bosquet de la Salle de Balle, the infanta is blowing soap bubbles. The king allows himself to be acclaimed by the Versaillais, the people of Versailles. A gondola ride on the Grand Canal concludes a successful day, successful because the official schedule has been strictly adhered to.

  EL ESCORIAL, AUTUMN 1723

  Opera Interlude

  The princess rarely smiles, except for bad reasons. Nothing besides the facetious nonsense that occupies her days makes her laugh. A rumor about her face, too serious for a girl so young, is spreading. In the hope that such apparent seriousness may be a good sign, odes to the virtues of the Princess of Asturias circulate among the people. Like them, the prince would prefer to delude himself; night after night, however, the fiasco is repeated. Not without variations, of course. Once they even reach climax, not together, not in one another’s arms, but in the same bed. He strokes her hand. Her eyes are closed, as if she’s sleeping. He keeps her hand tight in his until morning. He tells her he loves her. She doesn’t withdraw her hand. He takes this as a confession. Louise Élisabeth finds the whole thing funny, and like a child who becomes infatuated with a new toy, she takes pride in responding to him and seeks to outdo him in the demonstration of feelings. In the austere setting of El Escorial, scenes take place that leave the courtiers wondering. Louise Élisabeth accompanies her husband everywhere — almost everywhere, because she draws the line at hunting — kisses him, lets herself be embraced, spends days thinking about what gifts to give him. If he has to absent himself from the palace for two days, at his parting they act out a great scene of despair. They clasp each other, weep, move apart, rush back together with cries of “¡Mi marido!” and “¡Mi mujer!” The princess has to be supported. During this same period of time, she declares to her confessor that she wishes to reform her life and learn Latin.

  The first noun declensions bore her as rigid as her role of loving wife does. She demands that those of her women who have remained in Madrid be brought to El Escorial. They’re hardly in El Escorial before they all, including the princess, proclaim their desire to go back to Madrid.

  “There is nothing new here,” writes the prince to his father, “and the women have already asked me when we will return to Madrid.”

  Among the things that aren’t new is the meticulous exchange on the subject of hunts good and bad, marked by such confessions of discouragement as “my hunting goes from bad to worse” (November 6). In this period of disastrous weather, the sources of the prince’s disappointment even include a sermon he’s heard: “the best thing about it was that it lasted only twenty minutes” (November 28).

  VERSAILLES, DECEMBER 2, 1723

  “I hope for a crisis that will carry me off by surprise” (Philip d’Orléans)

  Death has his eye on Philip d’Orléans. He feels it, knows it. It excites him and terrifies him. He has apprehended the demise of his daughter and his mother and Dubois as so many premonitory signs. Death appreciates that sort of consent, preferring as he does to work in collaboration. Perhaps that’s why, after the regent declares, “I would not want a slow death; I have no wish to undergo the torments of a fatal illness. I hope for a sudden death, a crisis that will carry me off by surprise,” his wish is granted. The evening of December 2, when a large part of the palace is plunged in darkness and things outside are much worse, Philip d’Orléans, on the point of going to finish some work with the king, decides to grant himself a respite. He sends for Mme de Falari. He’s sitting in an armchair beside a fire, and he wants her to amuse him with a little story, one of the thousand bits of gossip that make up the daily life of Versailles. She begins cheerfully, leaning toward His Lordship. And then stops in horror. Philip d’Orléans has fallen forward, his chin on his chest. Mme de Falari rushes out of the apartment and calls for help. She finds the corridors empty, doors closed, no servants, certainly no doctors. She hurries up and down stairs, passes through deserted antechambers. After running around and crying out for more than half an hour, she finally manages to unearth someone. Philip d’Orléans is laid on the floor. In accordance with contemporary medicine’s first reflex and key remedy, the physician bleeds the patient. If the effects of this procedure upon the living are dubious, there’s no chance it will resuscitate a dead man. M. le Duc hastens to the scene and receives a double satisfaction: he sees the lifeless corpse of the man he detests and almost immediately obtains the post of chief minister. For he quickly betakes himself to the king, informs him of his uncle’s passing, and in the same sentence petitions to take the deceased’s place. After Cardinal Fleury gives his approval, the king, his eyes wet with tears, nods his head in affirmation.

  M. le Duc likewise takes over the apartments formerly occupied by Philip d’Orléans, on the ground floor, facing the Orangerie.

  IV

  Woe to the Vanquished!

  EL ESCORIAL, DECEMBER 20, 1723

  Defenseless

  The Princess of Asturias is again afflicted with erysipelas. Her whole face swollen, her head like a stone, she sinks into a lethargic life. Whether because of her illness or through indifference, she isn’t told of her father’s death until nearly a fortnight after the event. She has no notion of politics, but she instinctively knows that once the head of your clan is dead, unless he leaves behind an eldest son or widow of exceptional caliber, you lose and the enemy clan wins. Her despair is frightening. Elisabeth Farnese goes so far as to kneel down next to her daughter-in-law to talk sense to her. That the queen has made this gesture, t
hat she has literally lowered herself to her knees beside Louise Élisabeth, whose face is swollen by sickness and chagrin — this is considered most remarkable.

  Louise Élisabeth’s sister, the Duchess of Modena, is quite simply not informed. She discovers her father’s death only by obtaining a copy of the announcement sent to her father-in-law, a letter whose contents he had not the slightest intention of revealing to her.

  VERSAILLES, JANUARY 1724

  The Real Coming of Age

  Concerning the late Duke d’Orléans, the Gazette writes: “This Prince was particularly devoted to the maintenance of the peace he found established in Europe when he came to power; he solidified it even more by new treaties, and later by the formation of the happy bonds that unite France and Spain and are today the source of our dearest hopes.” The infanta, it seems, can continue to be joyful and sure of herself. “She asks only for joy,” as Mme de Ventadour noted upon the girl’s arrival in France. Any sort of music makes her feel like dancing, even a requiem. Nonetheless, there’s something irreparable in the air. The death of Philip d’Orléans means the end of his policies, the burial of his projects. It propels the young king into a new atmosphere. It definitively separates from power all those, men and women, whose presence or whose functions were dependent on Philip d’Orléans. They are now out of the running, Saint-Simon among the first of them. The little daughter of Spain transformed into the queen of France and her French ambassador both belong to the same lot: those who are to be, or have already been, disposed of. Saint-Simon has hardly glanced at the queen-infanta since her arrival in France, but if he would, he could see in the tight parabola of her triumph and decline the mirror image of his own political destiny. Saint-Simon will go into exile from Versailles of his own accord. The infanta will maintain some of her momentum and continue as long as possible to contribute heartbreaking fragments of joy to Mme de Ventadour’s obstinate lies.

  Louis XV’s thirteenth birthday liberated him in the abstract (and the most significant symbol of that pseudo-liberty may be seen in the king’s decision, once he came of age, not to sleep in the same room as his tutor anymore; except that the said tutor had in fact stopped watching over his sleep, only to be replaced by the undertutor!). Louis XV’s uncle’s death liberates him concretely, physically. In spite of his sadness, the young king feels the same new rapport with his body and its urges as he did on his tenth birthday, when M. de Villeroy gave him permission to abandon the corset of whalebone stays that trained him to hold himself erect.

  Discreetly, but with implications that Louis XV grasps immediately, M. le Duc absolves him from any feelings of obligation toward the person whom the king’s new tutor refers to as the “pygmy” infanta. Mariana Victoria is still there, but the king can live as if she doesn’t exist. So much for the project — which has proved to be highly unrealistic — of getting the king to love her. The appearances of affection are done away with. All that remain are the forms of courtesy and ceremony.

  At his grand château in Chantilly, M. le Duc organizes fabulous hunts, diurnal and nocturnal spectaculars, for the king. The boy’s apprenticeship to the kingly profession is about to retreat into the background — unless one thinks, as M. le Duc does, that enjoying the pleasures of life and delegating professional matters to others constitute the proper occupation for a sovereign. At Versailles, nothing less than icy conditions can keep the king from his hunting. The courtiers curse his energy, which obliges them to spend all their time galloping in pursuit of some animal; and as the beast jerks and twitches in its death throes, those noblemen — drenched, freezing, suppressing nasty coughs — sometimes wonder whether, instead of delighting in their exploit, they shouldn’t see in it a version of their own approaching end. But as for the king, he’s growing, and his health is a marvel. And even in the coldest temperatures, when frost turns the locks that escape from his headgear crisp and white, there’s something Dionysian about his young beauty. It cheers the hearts of the gouty and the rheumatic and sweeps away in a carefree gallop the princes closer to his age.

  Must Christmas at Versailles be preceded by a death every year? Does the celebration of the fabulous event, the birth of the infant Jesus, necessarily imply some sort of counterbalancing, macabre pact? Mariana Victoria doesn’t go so far as to think anything like that and, no doubt unconscious of the repetitive aspect of those December bereavements, doesn’t even make the connection between one Christmas and the other. She scampers through the winter from day to day, cherished by Mme de Ventadour and advised by Carmen-Doll. She passionately follows the king’s every act and gesture, sends him kisses and prayers. But it seems as though the elusiveness of her beloved, the gray skies, and the tardy mail deliveries, hampered by bad weather, combine to act upon the little girl’s morale. She’s no longer recognizable; she’s grouchy, ready to snivel at the slightest pretext, given to complaining without being able to say about what.

  On one particularly dismal morning, she wakes up aching all over; while she’s being dressed, she eschews her usual humming and her usual comments on the different articles of her clothing. She doesn’t admonish a foot that’s too slow to get into a stocking or a clumsy arm that won’t slip into a sleeve. All the same, she goes to morning Mass; afterward, however, she needs to be put to bed. Her nose and eyes are running, light hurts her. In her room with the curtains closed and her heart beating fast, she lies curled up under the eiderdown and awaits the intervention of the doctors. The sounds of footsteps outside her room, amplified by fever, give her a headache, through which she senses the physicians’ arrival. And suddenly they’re there. They move toward her bed. The flame of the candle placed at her bedside accentuates their dreaded silhouettes. With her burning eyes, the little girl perceives the visitors: gigantic noses, hunched backs, long arms ending in hands prepared to crush her. They’re carrying the lancet they’ll bleed her with. Mariana Victoria shrieks and howls. The bleeding must be postponed until later, but the doctors manage to examine the child. On her face and behind her ears, red blotches have appeared. Smallpox! The scourge that strikes children first, infects their eyes and eyelids, transforms their soft skin into a mass of pustules; the hemorrhagic plague that causes them to die in streams of blood! As soon as the physicians formulate their diagnosis, they abandon the infanta and turn their attention to what’s most important.

  M. le Duc flies into a rage; “Not only is this alliance bloody ridiculous, it’s also threatening to cost us the king.” The latter is covered with a fur cloak and thrust into a carriage that deposits him at the Trianon a few minutes later. The cold is glacial, and the teenager, standing before a fire that’s taking a while to catch, is at first disoriented by his exile. The protective cocoon of his habits has been ripped apart. Louis curses the way in which, one more time — the last, he swears to himself — he’s been summarily dealt with, the way his opinion has not been consulted. Is he the king or isn’t he? His Majesty is indeed the king. And it’s precisely because of that, because of the sacred character of his precious person, that it was necessary to act so quickly, to ensure that the disease infecting the queen-infanta doesn’t have a chance to reach him … The fire has caught. The king spreads out his cloak and lies down in the crackling warmth. The road between the palace and Trianon is noisy with the barking of dogs and the laughter of his friends. Louis lets himself give in to a surge of good humor. All of a sudden he likes this impromptu excursion. It allows him to forbid the place to people who bore him and to keep only his playmates near him.

  Throughout the morning of January 1, a ritual of long standing is renewed; in a long procession, the courtiers file past the king and offer him their good wishes for the New Year. The king has played his part in this annual scene since the age of five and has always been resigned to submitting to it as a matter of course. Generally, he simply doesn’t listen. When he was younger, the only effort he made was to remain still. As he grew older and became more compatible with the patient and imperturbable ceremonial mannequin
he was supposed to incarnate, he might have lent an ear to at least some of the many auspicious felicitations. He has refrained from doing so. Because he didn’t believe them, and because he was afraid that if he stopped playing deaf, he could be induced to reply. But on this January 1, 1724, in the little Trianon palace he so much loves, at a time when he’s just starting to have a sense of real freedom, the courtiers’ good wishes become clear and audible utterances, words he can believe in, expressions of his own desire to live.

  The young people leap from their mounts to the pink marble paving stones of the Trianon. At the supper that awaits them, outpourings of friendship will take the place of etiquette. And the champagne will provide the king with his first discoveries of the newborn year: the ease of drunkenness, the euphoria it engenders, the heat that rises to one’s cheeks and loosens one’s tongue.

  MADRID, JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1724