by Black Moishe
A woman came to remove the accumulated jewels that had made the Queen into a barbarian princess. Distraught, she did not move away but stood facing her mirror. She wanted to know:
“Where are my travel clothes? Are they ready? What about the little sailor suit for my son, the straw hat for my daughter? And what about teapots, coffeepots, chocolate pots? Hot-water bottles, chafing dishes, drawing materials, my paint boxes, my paintbrushes, my knitting needles, a spinning wheel? What do I know of evenings in Metz?”
Now she made a strange motion. She raised a protective arm and swayed on her feet, as if blinded by her own face. Then she said, slowly, groping for the right words:
“Louis XIV tolerates the King and me, because we are entrusted with the preservation of his Mausoleum, but he is dissatisfied with our services. I take refuge at the Petit Trianon and in the rustic cabins of my ‘Hamlet.’ The King, too, has his places of refuge. He shuts himself up in his dining room and sits in front of the portrait showing him in hunting costume, by Oudry. Or rather in front of the portrait of Louis XV in hunting costume, which the King had another artist alter to look like him. But in a dining room, people you have no wish to see are always apt to appear. Then the King goes and hides in his Most Private Office. There the paintings are not of royal hunters but of nymphs. No matter; the King, hidden away in his Most Private Office, has no eyes for the nymphs, instead, he counts. And in his diary he makes note of everything he has counted, the number of curtsys and bows for the visits of condolence upon the death of my mother the Empress, the number of baths he has taken in the course of the month, the number of horses he has ridden since the age of eight, the number of animals killed in hunts, the number killed per day, per month, the total for the first six months, the yearly total, stag hunts, boar hunts, hundreds and thousands of animals killed . . . And the inkblot on our wedding day, did he count that, I wonder? I made only a single blot but it could not be erased. That inkblot was more ignominious than tripping over a rug . . . I have gone over the scene in my mind a thousand times: I am bending over to sign, using the given name that is still foreign to me. Because I do not see well, I almost have to hold my face against the paper. Ma-rie-An . . . toi . . . I am pressing down hard, too hard. The pen scrapes. I have ink spattered all over me, even on my cheek.”
A moment earlier, the Queen had shone like a heathen idol. Now she wore a single garment: a plain gray dress. She was rubbing her cheek to try and erase the inkblot. A big lock of hair had fallen across her forehead. How beautiful she was, rambling on like that!
Madame Campan was becoming frustrated over a piece of jewelry that refused to be pried apart. I looked at that big heaving bosom. I could hear her rapid breathing. It was a minuscule room. I was too hot. And her dress, crushed against mine, made me think of a faded flower clinging to its neighbor and mingling its petals with hers as it died.
“And what about me; will I be going with you?” proclaimed the turmoil oozing from her very pores. “And what about me; will you forget me?” quavered the unspeakable chagrin overwhelming my very soul.
EXHAUSTION, SINISTER DAWN
(from two to four o’clock in the morning).
How did the time pass after that? I don’t really remember . . . I plunged back in among the wanderers, and the nighttime round continued. More uncertain than before, more scattered, increasingly eroded by the conviction that it was futile. In my case, holding as I did the secret of the royal family’s departure and believing I was virtually the only person in possession of that secret, the futility of this night watch struck me even more cruelly than it did others. And there was also the isolation imprisoning each of us, with its deep uncertainty, the mixture of wishing and fearing to learn more about the King’s decisions. In the Queen’s Gaming Room, some women had stretched out on the tables. Others, settled snugly in the window recesses, were talking in whispers, exchanging the latest news: “They kidnap our children, and demand huge ransoms in exchange.” I was back among ravaged faces, poor creatures wavering between flat despair and morbid, irrational excitement. Somnolent bodies here and there. In the room where sedan chairs were stacked, people had taken the chairs down and climbed inside. Some had drawn the curtains.
I left the Gaming Room and the Hall of Mirrors for the Lower Gallery. The apartments all along it had their doors shut. No sound came from them. Then I went back up, the way one would go to the Opera Theater, and crept along a corridor at the level of the loges. I could make out the surface of the Reservoirs, visible above the far end of the North Wing, the rather frightening ink-black mirror of their watery expanse. I lingered a moment, to look. The desolation of that dark pond, strangely suspended in space with the sky behind it, chilled me to the bone. Was it to get away from that image and from the gloomy forebodings it filled me with, that I walked aimlessly, taking the first stairway I chanced upon, a narrow, dank, smelly one, leading to other twists and turns that were darker still? For a while I met no one. Then a disconcerting company of inhabitants began to emerge. People such as I had never seen in the château until now. Were they climbing up out of the hold, driven by instinctive knowledge that over these and the next few hours the fate of the ship was being decided? I had never ventured into these regions before. As I looked, implausible beings came into view. Worn-out figures like threadbare garments, with yellowish, shrunken faces. Deformed creatures were appearing as well, individuals who were hunchbacked, one-eyed, lame, swollen with goiter, much too fat or skeletally thin. I was revolted by their lackluster eyes, their sickly masses of flesh, their blackened teeth. Others assailed my nostrils with a rancid, sticky smell. They were swathed like mummies in their old lacewear, and only with slow, deliberate care did they manage to put one foot before the other. There were also a number of women—some sort of farmwomen—who looked and moved like birds, and inspired real fear. I hastily drew aside, for I remembered, as I watched them sidling past, girded in fierce odors, amulets chinking round their necks, pockets bulging on their long aprons—as I was saying, I remembered the suspicious deaths, the rumors of poisonings that I had refused to believe at the time. I was afraid that, without having to lift a hand, they would shove a cold, slimy toad into the hollow of my back. My pointless roaming had taken me too far. I summoned up enough strength to run. I escaped them, at any rate temporarily, for if they should decide to hold their evil sabbat beneath the chandeliers of the Hall of Mirrors, it would be up to us to make way for them . . .
Breathless, sweating, I returned to my point of departure. A night such as this was no time to wander away from the vicinity of the Grand Apartments. We must remain as much as possible, and supposing that these next words still had any meaning, on familiar ground. And I found it reassuring to be back where I could hear the usual hum of conversation. And, for my greater comfort, I recognized a person who was dear to me and who, oblivious to hints that he should exercise discretion, was making no effort to keep his voice down.
I saw a large man trying to convince a much smaller one of this need for prudence. Convince him or smother him: the smaller man was struggling to break free of the giant, who, almost half again as tall as he, had him pressed against his chest.
“The alliance we formed four hundred years ago with the royal house is prejudicial neither to them nor to us . . . Monsieur de Noailles has been used quite unfairly; the suddenness of their recent favor has provoked a paroxysm of envy. The next thing you know they are yesterday’s men, while in fact they are persons of rank and condition all the more for being connected to our family.”
The sight of his face—a face remarkable for its distinguishing feature, a kind of great pimple or fleshy growth on its nose—was not required, for me to recognize the Marquess de La Chesnaye, whose position at Court was that of First Carver. He had two favorite themes: the antiquity of his family and his plans for improving the château. And because he confused the succession of names that all the various rooms had passed through from one reign to the next and even in the course of a singl
e reign—so great was the hold exercised over him by the past—it was often rather difficult to follow his train of thought. It was the voice of his father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather speaking through him and making him say, alternately and indiscriminately, the Baths Courtyard referring to the Stag Courtyard, the Oratory for the Daybed Room, the Wig Room instead of the Thermal Baths Office or Mirror Room . . . In his mind, where the present Royal Wine Cellars Courtyard lay, the Ambassadors’ Stairway still rose, and through the white marble of the Royal Chapel, there continued to shimmer the blue-tinted reflections of Thetis’s Grotto . . . But, for the moment, his sole preoccupation was the antiquity of his family. What he deplored most about Versailles, the great flaw that was his obsession, namely, that Versailles did not have an entrance worthy of the great château building, was relegated to second place. Monsieur de La Chesnaye harried his victim more and more relentlessly. The medals and ornaments covering his person jingled a shrill musical accompaniment to the litany of his ancestors and their virtues. The Marquess de La Chesnaye paused in his recital. He noticed I was there:
“Ah! Madame Laborde, we were discussing the Noailles family; it seemed to me that their honorable conduct might justly be applauded. The Duchess de Noailles, as a close friend of Madame de Neuilly, First Reader to the Queen, must be well known to you. What is your assessment of her?”
I stammered a reply, embarrassed at having to admit that I did not know her. I had never even seen her, save at a distance. And, what mattered more to me, the same was true of Madame de Neuilly. At Monsieur de La Chesnaye’s question, I felt a twinge of mortification. I walked away.
Once again I encountered Monsieur de Feutry. He was accompanied by Jacob-Nicolas Moreau. Monsieur Moreau, on account of never going anywhere without his heavy satchel, was leaning to one side. It happened to be the side where Monsieur de Feutry was. This, to an outsider, made my friend’s remarks look very confidential, which in reality they were not.
“Madame has honored me with her private views of the matter. You know how judicious the Countess de Provence is and how greatly I value her opinions. Well, she said to me, and I am quoting literally: ‘The situation strikes me as very bad.’ ”
“The deuce! Is that your opinion as well?”
“I said so yesterday evening to Madame Laborde (he had just noticed me). I think we are doomed, purely and simply.”
“This is not the first time I have heard you say that.”
“True. Mankind has defied Heaven once too often, and Heaven, in spite of all its forbearance, has finally taken revenge. Conditions were right for punishment, but I did not know what form the punishment would take or that it was so near. Speaking of imminent punishment, Monsieur, I am informed that you have in your possession an . . . interesting document. How shall I say? . . . An opuscule? A pamphlet? Yes. A pamphlet. The List of heads that must fall . . . or some such abomination . . . Could you lend it to me so that I may copy it out and file it in my archives?”
He bowed to Monsieur de Feutry, took leave of me with a wave of his hand, and went back to his fourth floor.
“Punishment”; he had uttered the word distinctly, raising his voice a little. This was too loud for a certain Monsieur Lemaire, wax warmer, an extremely timid man even in normal times. He wanted us all to lower our voices. So we whispered the pathetic half sentences that were all we had to offer each other. Little by little a multitude of priests came to swell our ranks. They were quivering and frightened. Their lips were moving constantly, giving passage to a smooth and endless stream of prayers. Their numbers became so noticeably dominant in certain salons, that those rooms might well have been mistaken for so many chapels. I began to pray with them and was shocked to hear a resonant voice coming from the next room.
A man was talking about hunting with hawks (“Hush! Hush!” begged the wax warmer):
“People have a wrong notion of Flemish falconers; they are first-rate. I hunted recently with the Royal Hawking. Its falconers, as you know, are for the most part Flemish or Dutch. They displayed exceptional skill, such as one might seek in vain among falconers coming from the South and yet the southerners are much admired. The King would have it that the falconers from the North are better. And he is right. Believe me, we can trust His Majesty’s judgment. In matters of hawking, Louis XVI is incomparably superior to his predecessors, even Louis XIII.”
“In matters of hawking, to be sure, and for every form of hunting, Louis XVI is a great king.”
The animation in the next room subsided. The murmur of prayers dominated once more. We were left with nothing to distract our minds from the thing it was impossible to name.
CLOSE THE GATES.
To make us more uneasy, someone suddenly noticed that our numbers were very small. And there was still the threat of that troop marching down on us from Paris. How were we to defend ourselves? “At the very least, the gates ought to stay closed for the day,” suggested a gentleman who informed the company that his name was Liard and he was one of the mole catchers (which gives some idea of how completely social order and hierarchy had ceased to be observed). “Ridiculous,” was the immediate verdict.
“Ridiculous and ill-considered. It would be giving the enemy proof that we are afraid.”
“We are afraid. And for that reason, I say again, let’s close the gates.” (The mole catcher was not backing down.) “What difference does it make? What’s ridiculous about it? When you are attacked, it is not ridiculous to protect yourself. Those gates have got to be closed, the ones that lead onto the Place d’Armes, the ones that are part of the Royal Fence . . .They were closed during the night. We will be running greater risks tomorrow, that is to say, today. . . ”
“It may be, when all is said and done, that the idea is not without merit. Closing the gates would be a fundamental act of protection. Not even protection, an act of dissuasion.”
“We are dealing with people whom it is no business of ours to persuade or dissuade. One does not reason with savages.”
“What if we threw them some coins? A few gold louis to distract them. They would fight among themselves, and while they were doing that, we would be left in peace. The device has been used many a time.”
“Distract them? The thing to do is give them a sound beating, crush them, grind them. Oh, I would like to get my hands on one of them! That bunch of rogues! scum, rabble, lackeys, mongrel dogs!”
Just then there was the sound of something falling, and we all jumped. It was only a statuette that someone’s elbow had knocked over. The guilty party looked at the damage with no sign of astonishment, said merely, “Oh, excuse me,” and pushed the pieces away with his sword.
I had the feeling that, before our very eyes and at supernatural speed, the château was coming apart. On a console table of gilded wood, housing a sculpture representing Astronomy, a large basin of water had been set. A few people had rushed over and were dipping their faces in it or trying to drink directly from the bowl.
The proposal to close the gates prompted further debate. The mole catcher had found a supporter.
“The man is right, why not give orders that the château gates are to be kept shut? It would not greatly alter the situation, but even so. It would discourage the waverers. Those swine are going to cut our throats, and we’ll have done nothing to stop them . . . ”
“Keeping the gates shut all day would be unprecedented.”
“You are mistaken, gentlemen, the gates have already been shut once in midday; that was when Louis XIV lay dying . . . An exemplary death. Everything Louis XIV did was exemplary, even his dying. Louis XV pulled himself together just in time to die honorably. But with Louis XIV there was not a hint of weakness. Everything about him was admirable, and his death a high point. . . Overcome at last by suffering, and with all the details of his funeral ceremonies scrupulously organized, the King lay in state. He had only uttered, before lapsing into unconsciousness, the supplication: ‘Oh, God! Help me to die.’ Then he opened his eyes again and
articulated clearly, speaking not to his confessor but to Madame de Maintenon: ‘Do you know, Madam, it is not at all difficult to die . . . ’ The King had entered into negotiations with Eternity. That was why he had ordered the gates closed: Versailles had ceased to belong to the kingdom of mortal men.”
* * *
“Louis XIV died of gangrene, Louis XV of smallpox . . . how astounding that our last two kings, rather than what one could properly call dying, should have rotted!”
“It’s all in the carcass, Your Lordship . . . ”
(These words, insolent and offensive, come back to me on sleepless nights. They act on my memory like irritants.)
Close the gates: very well, but who would go out and give orders to that effect? It was for the King to give such commands. Before daybreak. But how could he be reached? It would be best if one of us went instead. The mole catcher volunteered. It was unanimously agreed that, however great might be the chaos confronting us, a mole catcher could not be the bearer of a royal order. Just when the stalemate appeared hopeless, Jean-François Heurtier spoke up; he was the Château Architect and Inspector. He had joined the group a moment earlier and now put a speedy end to the discussion:
“It had occurred to me, back on July tenth, to take that precaution, that is, to give some thought to the closing of the gates. I went to see for myself. There are neither keys nor locks. I have ordered new ones made, but it will be several weeks before I receive them. That being so, the château is open, both night and day.”
Darkest fatalism now prevailed. Some men checked their pistols. Rather on general principles than from a clear determination to fight. Have a set-to with a lot of lackeys, how humiliating! In contrast, I heard the last words of the challenge to a duel. I had no need to catch the actual words, I could infer them from the arched backs, the fierce looks, the hands clenched on sword hilts, a kind of opposing electrical current, flowing fraternally but mortally between the two young men.