The execution was delayed, as the prior made several attempts to persuade the Queen to save the Marchese’s life, for he stubbornly refused to make his confession…But when he saw that there was no hope, he turned to those present and said, ‘My friends, regard my unhappy lot. Learn from my fate: never do anything wicked!’
…The Queen was not even surprised at his miserable treachery, for he had already proved himself disloyal to his natural lord, Pope Alexander VII, composing satires and lampoons about him. These were later found on the Marchese.8
Christina’s description of the events at Fontainebleau does not read well. Her story of the earlier meeting cannot be confirmed, but it seems all too convenient that the Marchese should there have condemned himself to death, and urged her to be merciless. His plea for banishment and his ‘stubborn refusal’ to make his confession are both completely untrue, and his exhortation to the ‘friends’ who were about to execute him to behave themselves in future is, to say the least, unlikely. Monaldeschi, she writes, had ‘already’ proved himself disloyal, but in her haste to placate the Pope, Christina does not notice that the offending satires were not found until ‘later’. The open letter was a clear attempt to save the remnants of her good name. No one believed it.
Monaldeschi’s death, and Christina’s intransigence after it, placed Cardinal Mazarin in a difficult position. The Queen’s insistent talk of treachery had led the gossip away from duels and love affairs, and drawn it towards political intrigue, threatening the secrecy of the Naples plan. Paradoxically, Christina was serving her own interests by insisting on her own guilt. Though a throne might be lost, her sense of sovereignty must not be, for this was her very sense of self. Despite her abdication, despite her financial dependence, despite her tiny retinue of motley courtiers, she was convinced that she was born to rule, and rule she would. The Queen of Naples she might or might not be in future. She was already a Queen in fact, and the world was to take cognizance of it. Let Mazarin play Machiavelli. Christina’s role was the Prince.
After the first rush of scandal, Mazarin decided that the Queen must leave France. She lacked the means to travel, as he knew very well, and towards the end of November, he wrote to the Swedish Ambassador, asking for money for her. It was not the first such letter that he had written, and this time, too, it elicited no material response. He did not wish to insist or to threaten, for the Swedes were France’s allies; a treaty signed earlier that year had renewed their mutual friendship. The Swedish King was Christina’s cousin, and he retained a firm affection for her. Moreover, Sweden’s ‘warlike prince’ was in arms again. Flush from the conquest of Poland, with the Danes on the brink of defeat, Karl Gustav had now turned his army southward. Across the frozen Baltic, the ice perilously close to breaking beneath the weight of arms and horses, he was marching towards Brandenburg, followed by the French Ambassador – whether from cold or fear, apparently more dead than alive. The memory of the Queen’s great father still shone fiercely. No one wanted to inflame the Swedes to warfare deeper into Europe. The Cardinal was therefore obliged to content himself with expressing Louis’ disapproval and his own displeasure at the ‘ill counsel’ that had prompted Her Majesty to wreak such furious vengeance, adding, with more tactic than truth, that his King had nonetheless conveyed to her ‘every mark of affection’.9 He himself took a quieter revenge by allowing her to languish in the lonely countryside through three long winter months.
At Fontainebleau, she waited restlessly for an invitation to court. It did not come. Just as she had done in Pesaro, so now she spent much of her time writing letter after pleading letter to Mazarin, complaining of her boredom in the isolated château, and venting her frustration over the Naples plan. It is a measure of her astonishing naivety that, after all that had happened, she still believed that the throne might be hers: ‘I shall not dictate to you the time of my delivery from this present purgatory,’ she wrote, with unusual humility, ‘but I beg you to consider that I cannot return to Italy honourably without having spoken to you, nor without being at the head of the army that you promised me.’10
But the Cardinal’s gout had become a matter of policy, and it did not improve. She was not asked to visit him, and he took no steps to visit her. So, just as she had done from Pesaro, she decided once again to invite herself to Paris. News of her preparations found their way to the capital before her, and she was swiftly paid a forestalling visit by the King and his brother. They arrived ‘informally’, with a retinue of courtiers, and stayed about an hour. The King chatted affably about this and that, walking through the Galerie des Cerfs to the Queen’s own apartment, and if he did notice the bloodstains on the wall, he did not mention them. Christina was excessively gratified by the visit. At their departure, she accompanied the King and his brother not only to the top of the staircase, as was her wont with ordinary guests, nor to the bottom of it, as was her habit with royalty, but right out to – and indeed almost into – their carriages.
Two lesser personages also came to pay their curiosity-fuelled respects: la Grande Mademoiselle, now reconciled with the King, and the ballet master Isaac de Benserade, who had once served at the Swedish court. Mademoiselle found the Queen ‘looking very well’ in flame-coloured garb with black finishing – a devilish touch, it seems, for Mademoiselle could not suppress ‘a frisson of fear’ on seeing her. She, too, passed through the Galerie des Cerfs, and noted that ‘although they had washed it well, the marks were still there’.11 To de Benserade, Christina herself shamelessly relayed the whole story. Seeing him shudder at its conclusion, she smiled and asked him whether he was afraid she might do the same to him. The gentleman’s response is not recorded, but he did not come again.
Christina’s patience, or persistence, was finally rewarded. Towards the end of January 1658, the longed-for invitation arrived. She could travel to Paris for the carnival season before Lent, and stay in the Cardinal’s own apartments at the Louvre. If she interpreted this as acceptance back into the fold, it was not; the apartments had been chosen particularly for her, she was informed, ‘as she would not be staying long’. She did not take the hint. Declaring herself indifferent to creature comforts, she saw no reason for the Cardinal to feel incommoded by his own removal to a small ‘cabinet’, and anyway, on her first visit she had not had time to see his art collection properly.
To her surprise, many of her Paris friends found that they themselves had less time now. Partly embarrassed, partly uncomprehending, she did the best she could with those who were willing to see her, among them Saumaise’s niece, the Comtesse Charlotte de Brégy, whom she had known in Stockholm, and her own Doctor Bourdelot, now a wealthy – and largely absentee – abbé. Despite Christina’s now dreadful reputation, Bourdelot seems to have retained his affection for her, for throughout her stay in Paris he accompanied her everywhere, providing a measure of respectability among her otherwise motley companions.
The Cardinal himself relented sufficiently to arrange an invitation for her to the ballet de cour, and in the middle of February she attended a première in which the young King, musical and lightfooted, took a modest role. It was no great courtesy to Christina, as it was in fact a public event. ‘Anyone could go,’ wrote la Grande Mademoiselle. ‘There were all sorts of people there.’ The music for the ballet, Alcidiane et Polexandre, had been written by a gifted young Florentine composer – and Mademoiselle’s former Italian instructor – named Giovanni Battista Lulli, soon to be Gallicized as Jean-Baptiste Lully. It was an historic evening, for this was the first complete ballet that he had ever composed, and here, for the first time, the audience heard his new, slow-quick-slow ‘French’ overture. Though set in motion by an Italian, a native musical style had begun.
The ballet tells a tale of love and adventure, with Polexandre, warlike King of the Canary Islands, traversing the world from the Arctic to the tropics in search of Alcidiane. After the requisite number of shipwrecks and duels in suitably exotic locations, he duly wins her. En route, the audience i
s treated to scene after fanciful scene as befitted the ballet of the time – a composite of mime, courtly dance, and tableau vivant, all set to Lully’s elegant music. Grand baroque gestures alternated with subtle and often coded movements of great refinement. With long gowns concealing the ladies’ feet, virtuosity proceeded from the arms and head. Enough for each courtly foot to follow Lully’s characteristic, limping rhythm – long note, short note, long note, short note – the perfect accompaniment to a stately progress in extravagant costume. Complex machinery, months in the making, produced large-scale hoists and thrusts for the many scenes of warfare, which included drum calls, marches, a charge and retreat, a fortress attack, and a ‘Battle of the Pleasures’, imitating the rules of real combat. The cast included a full complement of slaves, shepherds, giants and dwarves, the latter ‘posturing grotesquely’. The King took the part of Hatred, gesturing and stepping alongside Jealousy, Innocence, and other allegorical characters. Other gentlemen danced in women’s attire, ‘diverting the court extremely’. The composer himself danced with the King’s valet de chambre, and later appeared as a Moor, clacking castanets in time to his own music; in one scene he conducted a group of musicians onstage, dancing all the while en costume as a faun. For Lully the performance was a personal triumph, and it sealed his destiny as Louis’ preferred composer. For the King, it was a significant step towards the splendid, propagandistic ballets royales of later years, when, filled with confidence artistically as otherwise, he would remove his courtiers to the spectators’ seats, and apportion to himself every leading role.
But for Christina, this sparkle in the Parisian sky was a shooting star. Though she lobbied hard to be invited elsewhere, the death of Monaldeschi had cast too long a shadow, and her first invitation proved to be almost her last. As was her habit when invitations were wanting, she concocted her own, at one point descending on the Queen Mother’s apartments in search of the King and his brother to go out into the town with her. They were both present, but well hidden, and they did not come out until Christina had gone. La Grande Mademoiselle herself had not courage enough to be seen with her in public, ‘for fear everyone would make fun of me’.12 Christina did receive one further invitation, to a grand assembly given by one of the state treasurers. There, pathetically, she made herself ridiculous by her clumsy dancing. ‘We were all laughing at her,’ wrote Mademoiselle. The Queen Mother herself, hearing about it the next day, decided she must see this sight for herself. She persuaded Louis to invite the Queen to a private ball within the Louvre ‘so that we could laugh at our leisure’. Christina came, but ‘just to make trouble’; her old Stockholm friend, the Comte de Brégy, had sent a kindly warning of what was afoot, and she contented herself with a few untheatrical bows.
Uncowed nonetheless, she frenzied herself in a round of public balls and entertainments, arriving masked and costumed, and each time more fantastically. Though she was spurned in society, ordinary people thronged to see her, and she did not disappoint them as she charged about the city, in Turkish or gypsy garb, hailing any public carriage that happened to be passing. Afternoons would find her at the theatre, with not a single woman in attendance, and she would laugh and applaud and pass loud comment, moving about restlessly, gesticulating with extravagance. Even her snoozes, it seems, which she took during the slower moments onstage, were snoozed with a vengeance.
Two young Dutchmen, passing through Paris, saw her one evening in this carnival season. They were struck by the proud expression of her ‘beautiful sparkling blue eyes’, and remarked that only the very bold could have endured her gaze for long. They noted, too, her haughty Amazon pose, one foot defiantly planted before the other – an appropriate pose, in this instance, for her headdress was Amazon, too.
The whirligig continued for four weeks and more, with Christina cavorting about town, showing ‘very little wisdom, a lot of bad behaviour, and a great desire for pleasure’.13 Late into the night her revels continued, and she was up again, noisily alert, in the early hours of every morning, alarming the courtiers and wearing out the servants. Towards the middle of March, the carnival season began to draw to a close, and with it the round of balls and concerts that had so engaged her until then. With the dancing at an end, it was time for reflection, and Christina’s thoughts now turned to the world of letters. A different kind of entertainment was in order, and she decided to go to the Académie Française. During her previous visit to Paris, the académiciens had welcomed her with great ceremony, and this time she felt an extra need of their approval. In the aftermath of the Monaldeschi affair, she had been hoping for support from the community of the learned. They at least, she felt, would understand the nobility of her stance, and the justice of her cause. But, although there were some who defended her, on the narrowest legal grounds,14 the deed itself had been so personally repellent that, among the learned as in society, she remained persona non grata. Consequently, though she had now been in Paris for more than a month, she had received neither visit nor invitation from the Académie. Undaunted, she decided to invite herself, writing disingenuously to them that she hoped they would pardon ‘a young girl’s curiosity’. She wished to share the company, she said, of ‘those good men whom she had always held in particular esteem and affection’.15 And in the afternoon of the eleventh of March, the ‘young girl’, in the fullness of her 31 years, duly appeared at the Hôtel Séguier, a grand private house where the Académie held its regular meetings. She noticed at once that her portrait, before which the académiciens had sworn to pay eternal homage, had been removed.
The gentlemen were taken by surprise. Despite the Queen’s letter, they had not expected a visit from her, and they were now in the middle of a debate. Christina bid them continue, but not before she had asked whether they would remain standing in her presence. She was informed that they would keep their seats, and when she expressed surprise, a precedent was provided: the French King Henri IV had always permitted the learned to remain seated during their discussions. Christina was obliged to be satisfied with this, and she duly sat down herself.
The debate proved somewhat sensitive: it concerned a treatise on pain. The president rose to the occasion, however, remarking that the subject was ‘singularly appropriate to convey the pain felt by those present…at being so soon to lose sight of Her Majesty, owing to Her imminent departure’.16 Her Majesty did not depart, however, and the discussion moved on to the definitions to be accepted for the new dictionary of the French language, then still almost 40 years away from publication. The word at issue was ‘game’, and as an example of its usage, a familiar saying was suggested: ‘The games of princes please no one but themselves.’ Whether pointed or not, the phrase hit its mark, for Christina was seen to blush, and then, with a strained smile, she rose from her seat and left.
Back at the Louvre, at least, pleasures awaited her in the form of some of her own works of art, forwarded from Antwerp. Most of them she could not keep. The Cardinal took them as security for a large loan secured to get Christina out of France and back to Rome. To his Ambassador in Stockholm, he wrote, ‘Tell the King of Sweden that I have exerted myself to prevent this Queen from collapsing into his arms, and it has cost King Louis eighty thousand écus.’17 For his own personal collection he chose several valuable tapestries, and these he kept until, little by little, Christina repaid the money, and the Cardinal, carpet by carpet, sent them back.
Though the carnival was over and her purse was now refilled, Christina made no plans to leave. In Paris she remained unforgiven and unreceived, but at least she had a place to stay and plenty of pictures to look at. The Pope had told her not to return to Rome, and by now it was clear that she would not be welcome a second time at the Palazzo Farnese. Desperate to be rid of her, Mazarin promised her the use of his own palazzo in Rome, but still she did not move. Finally, the Queen Mother threatened to leave the Louvre herself if the Swedish Queen did not go. The Cardinal had an old carriage driven up to the gates, and the Queen was escorted into it, and
so she left Paris, with heads shaking and tongues wagging behind her. She appears to have taken the Cardinal’s gout along with her, for the very next day His Eminence was seen walking comfortably, and, some say, with a decided spring in his step.
Old Haunts, New Haunts
Christina reached Rome in the middle of May, and made her way to the Palazzo Mazarini. It was as well she had it to go to, for she was not welcome anywhere else. As she had been in Paris, so now she was shunned in her adopted home. The Pope refused to receive her, and pasquinades were pasted up all over the city, describing her cruelly as a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame. Most of her old friends she found tactically unavailable; the academy evenings which she resumed defiantly, once filled with noblemen and prelates, ‘now seemed a desert’. Christina countered by a rejection of her own. She had no intention of staying in Rome, anyway, she declared; she was only waiting for the French to take Naples; then she would be on her way to bigger and better things entirely. No one took her seriously, but her talk was a major embarrassment to the Pope, who was trying to broker a peace between France and Spain, at war still after 25 years. He sent her a message asking her to leave Rome, but she could not have left even if she had wanted to. Though the Swedes were now paying her allowance, it was not being sent to Christina herself, but directly to Mazarin to repay what he had lent her. Her lack of money at last became so pressing that she was obliged to sell the uniforms she had ordered for her future guardsmen; with them she handed over at last her dream of the crown of Naples.
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 34