by Paul Lussier
I knocked.
“Entrez, si vous insistez!”
And there he was, as God made him. Ugh.
I entered cautiously. “Mr. Franklin?” I asked meekly, and presented myself. “John Lawrence, sir, at your service.”
“My morning bath—I hope I don’t offend,” he said, ass stuck far out, bending to touch his toes, “but I’ve found exercise to be quite critical to my health and posture. Being the busy sole plenipotentiary that I am, my days so chock-full, I am afraid I haven’t the luxury of altering my routine, of taking time away for youngsters fresh from America wishing to seek my favor, a letter of recommendation, or perhaps . . . is it a position you crave, young man?”
“I have a letter from General Washington, announcing the mission with which I have been entrusted, most kind sir.”
He brought himself around to face me. The view was not much better.
“I know who you are and what you intend. I am as popular here as pastry, just as well regarded and well loved. I had news of you within a day of your arrival in L’Orient, and as I’m sure you’ve calculated, Passy is normally six days’ travel from that dreary port. What this means, of course, is that couriers, of their own volition, rode day and night to alert me to your presence because they cared not to have me surprised by the likes of you.”
“I see,” I mumbled, shifting nervously from side to side.
“Of course, there isn’t anyone you didn’t tell of your arrival! For starters, while your eagerness to accomplish your mission can be understood, being green, avid, and foolish as you clearly are, I dare say that sharing your objective with the harbor boatswains and various milkmaids you met en route regarding your intended correction of my professional failings is beyond excuse. And your testy tête-à-tête with the Marquis de Castries—most embarrassing.”
As to the incident with Castries, the Minister of Marine from whom I was to seek a French fleet, Franklin was right to find fault with me.
On my way to Passy I was hailed by a stalled carriage just ahead of mine. When the velvet-waistcoated gentleman passenger (who explained that his horses quite suddenly and inexplicably had been seized with cramps) turned out to be none other than the Marquis de Castries, I, losing all regard for his unhappy situation, dove in.
A perfectly thunderous cavalcade of attacks against his government came out of my mouth, accusing France of everything from betraying America with empty promises to placing icebergs “suspiciously” in the way of my frigate Alliance as it crossed the Atlantic. Yes, indeed, I got rather carried away. . . .
Of course, a scuffle ensued. The marquis eventually challenged me to a duel, which, thank God, I had the momentary sense to dismiss as “beneath me to accept,” thereby adding insult to injury. The whole ridiculous joust ended on my insistence that he send a huge and powerful French fleet to America this instant or I’d take up my sword against France! The marquis dared me to do just that, lying that he’d been planning to commission a fleet to America, but now, based on this “filthy encounter,” he would order the fleet to avoid the United States’ shores altogether and head for the West Indies instead!
Not an auspicious start.
“Chalk it up to seasickness? Or homesickness, perhaps?” I asked meekly, begging Franklin’s indulgence.
Franklin replied, “Perhaps. Well, I think I’ve got the perfect cure for that . . . and my own biliousness as well.”
He farted proudly.
“You have forty-eight hours, my young friend, to rest yourself—here, if you like—after which I’m shipping you back to Boston. As cargo, if I must.”
At which point I brandished the letter Washington had written expressly for Franklin and none other. It read:
Honorable Sir,
The present infinitely critical posture of our affairs made it essential . . . to send from hence a person who had been eyewitness to their progress and who was capable of placing before the Court of France in a more full and striking point of light than was proper or even practicable by any written communications.
What I have said to him, I beg leave to repeat to you, that to me nothing appears more evident than that the [termination] of our opposition will very shortly arrive if our allies cannot afford us . . . aid, particularly in money and in a naval superiority which are now solicited.
Yours very truly,
G. Washington
Franklin folded the letter and said not a word.
Checkmate.
“So I’m afraid we’re stuck with each other until my mission is done,” I ventured.
Franklin adopted a more conciliatory tone. “Truthfully, what actions do you imagine yourself taking here in France that I haven’t attempted already?”
He called to an attendant for his waistcoat.
“Does our esteemed General truly believe you have a skill that surpasses mine? And if so, on what basis has he made this judgment?”
“I’m—not certain, of course, sir.”
“Speak, my man!” Franklin roared. “Speak to me of what everyone back in America thinks of Benjamin Franklin!”
Wheeling about on his bunioned toe toward me:
“Speak to me of my rumored love of the ladies; of the fabulous feasts I host at government expense, of the high living; the endless promenades and concerts and soirees where I spend my mornings, afternoons, and evenings in attendance, of my girlfriend Helvetius who wipes her ass with her dress, and of my would-be fiancée, Madame Brillon, who kisses her dog on the lips!
“Speak to me of my lack of interest in The Cause, my hundreds of servants, and my wine cellar filled with one thousand one hundred and forty bottles of wine. Of my self-infatuation, my hedonism, my atheism, my overstated charm!
“Speak to me of all that and I will say it is all part of the job, you silly infant! As you shall shortly see!”
“I’m not here to question your reputation, sir. I’m simply here to do a job—”
“Then do it! But do it without my aid. You are on your own.”
And with that, he ended the audience, exiting the boudoir, slamming the door behind him. I wondered if he’d realized he was missing a stocking and had forgotten to put on underclothes.
“A part of the job . . . you shall shortly see . . .” he’d said. No, I wouldn’t and couldn’t see. For whatever Franklin was doing, it wasn’t working. The great man who had harnessed electricity had himself been harnessed by the French as a cosseted plaything.
Later that night, while Franklin was out at a “function” to which I was pointedly not invited, I don’t know what came over me, but I was compelled to sneak into the ambassadorial wine cellar and count the number of wine bottles that Franklin had stored.
There were exactly one thousand one hundred and forty.
And the next day, when the aforementioned Madame Brillon stopped by Franklin’s office for “morning tea,” which meant spending the day in his private sitting room riding his lap like a horsie, I knew exactly who I was dealing with. I didn’t also need to witness the pleasure Franklin took in Brillon French-kissing her Great Dane to see that for all practical purposes, Franklin’s diplomatic mission was long since done.
I never met the Lady Helvetius, thank goodness. When I heard she was arriving, I left the Hotel de Valentinois bound for Versailles immediately, for I had no desire whatsoever to watch a fine lady put her skirt to a dubiously hygienic purpose for which it had never been designed.
CHAPTER 33
Palace of Light
Queen Marie-Antoinette stunk like a skunk.
I smelled her coming as I stood on a mezzanine a full story above the courtyard through which she was passing. I had just exited the office of Vergennes, minister of foreign affairs, to whom, as an official emissary of General Washington’s, I was making a vigorous plea for cash, dangling the threat of British military power which would inevitably be mobilized against France if America were trounced.
“The British will not be forgiving, Minister. I can tell you that. And wi
thout the American conflict diverting Britain’s military resources, France will find herself having to defend against England’s wrath on her own, confronted by what will prove to be the most spectacular display of British naval and military power the world has yet to see.”
Vergennes shifted in his seat.
“France has declared herself, sir,” I continued. “And having done that, it seems to me that she has no choice but to put her money where her mouth was when, over three years ago, our alleged alliance was forged. England will seek revenge if she can. You have it in your power, esteemed Minister, by assuring victory with your aid, to make it impossible for England to succeed in such retaliation.”
He belched. I could see now why Franklin and he supposedly got along.
Vergennes wasn’t as impolite as Franklin, simply more interested in whatever it was he was eating, which nothing I said could stop him from picking at (even as he complained that it tasted suspiciously of rat). In fact, until he offered me “un petit goût” of the stew to help him figure out the species of meat involved—which was, at the moment, clearly of more concern to him than the possible decimation of all France—I wasn’t entirely convinced he knew I’d entered the room.
Nor did he salute me when I left minutes later, disheartened and fatigued. But for my smelling Marie-Antoinette in the courtyard below, my entire French assignment might well have ended then and there, in eye-opening defeat, over a bowl of it-looked-like-rat-not-raven-to-me soup.
What can I say about Versailles, the center of administration of all France, one of the most richly ornamented chateaux ever built? There was so much silver, gold, gilded bronze, and crystal that even on this cloudy morning I had to squint to find my way down the marble staircase to the courtyard where I was hoping to get a look at the queen.
On a sunny day, apparently whole legions of courtiers could get lost if they didn’t shield themselves from the sun with wide-brimmed hats. But since those were out of fashion these days, everyone was walking around Versailles blind as a bat.
Standing there in the Hall of Mirrors (a profusion of floor-to-ceiling pier glasses and Bohemian crystal chandeliers lit by seventeen arched windows offering a view outside of stunning labyrinthine gardens and magnificent expanses of water, all reflected in the mirrors inside), it seemed clear to me why King Louis and his Queen Marie-Antoinette had such famous trouble conceiving children. They probably couldn’t find each other in all that glare.
Various drawing rooms constellating the palace, each more grotesquely ornamented—a solid gold fire screen, really!—than the next, were filled with the most imaginative array of (I guess they were human) fops and fopettes spending their days waiting and waiting and waiting for the nearsighted king to notice them. Poor thing: Evidently his royal vision was so bad that Louis could only recognize people by their sound.
Oh, the noises coming out of that desperate crowd. Entire futures hanging on the right bon mot, the perfectly timed compliment, the occasional eye contact (good luck!) or hint of a smile. The packed bosoms or dicks (who knew for sure what the king preferred?), each hoped beyond hope to catch the king’s eye. A life of living hell, if my one day as a courtier was any indication.
Now to the subject of how I even came to be in this Hall of Mirrors. The goal was to be invited to dinner, or perhaps the opera or a play, by the king, and in so doing to enter the inner sanctum of power, the possibility of great riches, and untold fame.
My access to the palace was due, to a degree, to Marie-Antoinette’s good favor. I say “to a degree” because had I known that to be a courtier all anyone really need do was rent a hat and walking stick from one of the dozens of street vendors providing cheap versions of aristocratic paraphernalia just outside the palace gates and then, looking smart, walk right in, I could have made things easier on myself. Still, I was in, with a slight edge on the rest of the fops-in-attendance, due to the queen’s good graces following a curious accident, presaging an “opening.”
As I was smelling her approach from above outside Vergennes’s lair earlier that day, Marie-Antoinette, in a brocaded pannier skirt that was stiffer and wider than a horse-drawn carriage, came wobbling around a corner into view. The edge of her skirt hoop struck a column of marble and the impact knocked her off her feet, tossing her to the ground. Her hair, all three and a half feet tall of it, arced across the courtyard, shedding its ornaments in flight.
I do not jest. There was an entire miniature village affixed to that wig: a tiny hamlet, a porcelain bridge spanning a wooden river, a chapel with windows of painted glass, dozens of pretty green trees, all bounded by a pebble stone wall fronted with a sign—LE XANADU—and topped with ostrich feathers.
At least that’s how I imagined the various bits and bobs fitting together when I, after watching the queen laid low, ran downstairs to help. While she remained sprawled across the courtyard floor and her retinue of horrified servants and ladies of the court were wrangling with her hoop to help her up, I collected the scattered pieces of the rustic diorama previously gracing her pate.
Once a lady was down in one of those dresses, apparently she was down for the count. It took six ladies-in-waiting several minutes to rock the royal beauty, wigless, back to a standing position.
And it took about the same amount of time for me to resolve in my mind the mystery of her malodorousness. It was her scalp. Or rather, the wet glue spread all over it evidently used to affix the fabulous “Xanadu” concoction to her head. “Pomade,” they called it—a goo so foul it made me gag and, I later learned, so toxic that it dissolved flesh and over time leached into the brain and caused madness. Added to the stench of the pomade was, upon closer inspection, the horrific sight of diverse insect life scuttling about inside the coils of hair on her wig: a dense accumulation of lice, roaches, and ants. I guess the palm-sized pitchfork wielded by most wig wearers to pick out debris didn’t exactly fulfill its intended function.
Unable to induce myself to touch the wretched assembly of powdered plaits, stinking to high heaven and crawling with vermin, I gave up.
“Ugh!” I groaned, loudly enough for the queen and her fair ladies to hear. A hush—deafening, dangerous—fell across the courtyard.
Would the insulted queen have my head on a platter?
Dead silence. And with it, ah yes, the opening . . .
The queen actually smiled at me: wee and unenthusiastic, but still, a smile.
“C’est ridicule, n’est-ce pas, comment la reine pue? Vous-avez beaucoup de courage, monsieur—j’aime bien faire voitre connaissance. Comment appelez-vous?” (“Ridiculous, is it not, how much a queen is made to stink? You have much courage, sir. I’d like to know you. What is your name?”)
And she extended her hand to me.
I introduced myself, “Monsieur John Lawrence,” explaining that I was “fresh in” from America and a friend of General Washington’s.
It was as if I’d said I was from Mars, for all the recognition that the names “America” and “Washington” seemed to evoke. But wouldn’t it be the way of this Revolution that the most ignorant woman on earth would be my—and America’s—saving grace? Once again, expectations would be defied. For the Revolution didn’t care that Marie-Antoinette would never come within fifty feet of a book if she could help it and was so stupid she had trouble remembering the number of “Louis” kings preceding her own husband (“Il est le seizième, n’est-ce pas?” — “He’s the sixteenth, is he not?”).
What the Revolution cared about was our connection: the simple, plain satisfaction she took in my daring to bemoan her grotesqueness; the overwhelming, palpable relief she took in being treated as any woman who was gliding about smelling like carrion and cheese. And wouldn’t you know she was the very thing the Revolution needed, providing access—lo and behold!—to her husband, King Louis (number sixteen).
If I promised not to desist in my candor (fortunately for me, “honesty” was currently in vogue at dinner parties), Marie-Antoinette “nominated” me to
sup with the king later in the evening. She asked nothing of my purpose in Versailles, and when I offered to explain, she waved me away. She wanted only to see me dressed more plainly, in the color “caca dauphin,” a new shade of brown created to commemorate her recently born son’s first bowel movement, evidently a symbol of his vitality. This, she claimed, was a color the king liked, not for the respect it connoted, but because, for some reason, he could see brown.
She counseled me to loll about in the “Gentlemen’s Drawing Room” in the palace’s west wing, around about nine; to stand close by the third door to the right, by which, begging my confidence, she assured me that the king would enter. She said she could manage the introduction to the king. After that, for the invitation to dinner, I was on my own.
So that’s how I came to stand, restlessly and without refreshment, among the glare-stricken lookie-loos and royal hopefuls bowing, curtsying, and scraping their way through one of the thirteen opulent drawing rooms of Versailles; how I came to spend an entire day with those who, laying their bet on a particular drawing room and door through which it was rumored the king might on this day pass, would while away the waiting hours playing faro, dancing the minuet, gossiping rapaciously, performing party tricks, and feeling each other up and down. (Window seats and corners that were particularly well lit or flattering to complexions, chairs that were “slimming,” were laid claim to up to twenty-four hours ahead of the king’s rumored passage!)
Of course, I had no idea, should I even get my introduction to the king, what on earth I’d say or do. I simply decided, sheer impulsiveness having gotten me this far, that I’d take my position by the third door to the right and just do my job—whatever it took. The entire world, it seemed, was convening in this drawing room and at that third door. And everyone else was in brown too.