The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down (8 page)

The beauty of it was that Louis had no need to enforce his will through terror. On the contrary, any nobleman favored enough
by birth or talent to be a member of the Sun King's court counted himself among the most fortunate beings on earth. Anxious
though they might be over money and social advancement, very few courtiers had any more sense of being put upon, suppressed,
or manipulated by their sovereign than do the angels in heaven. Like anyone who has ever given away something that cannot
be retrieved, they were perfectly thrilled to be able to live in the comforting fiction that what they had lost was of little
value.

It goes without saying, though, that Louis gave his courtiers scant leisure or motivation to dwell on this side of things.
He knew that they must be entertained and distracted, given the long hours of enforced idleness between public functions,
and that he himself was the principal source of entertainment. His life, accordingly, was played out almost entirely in public,
from the moment he awoke at eight-thirty A.M. to some one hundred noblemen milling in his bedchamber, separated from the royal
bed by nothing more than a wooden barrier; through the supposedly private family meals and the public
grands couverts,
during which throngs hung anxiously goggling at every sip of the royal broth; to his ritual
couchee
at eleven-thirty P.M., an equally crowded event.

His love life, too, was a matter of public record, the position of titular mistress being formally recognized and compensated.
He cheated openly on his mistresses, who were not always as tolerant as the queen. Each of his three official mistresses -
Louise de la Valliere, the marquise de Montespan, and Mme de Maintenon was eased in and out of his favor with an exquisitely
slow and painful deliberateness that kept the court gossips (i.e., everyone) keen-eyed and limber-tongued for years. When
he eventually took Mme de Maintenon as his lover, he housed her in rooms directly behind those of Montespan, to whose royal
bastards she had once been governess. By appearing to enter Montespan's apartment, only to slip out the back into Maintenon's,
the king was in principle protecting her feelings and prerogatives, but since everyone at court knew all about the ruse, he
was in fact undermining and serving her up as a rather corpulent sacrifice to court scandal. In the same way, when he humiliated
the hapless Marechal de Gramont - by first reading him a madrigal, which he encouraged the old man to disparage, and then
revealing it as his own - it was most certainly in full view and earshot of dozens of idle rumormongers. Dainty titillations
went a long way at Versailles when tendered by the king.

The members of his family were expected to assume their share of the burden of public life. The king's brother, known in court
as Monsieur, made no attempt to conceal his passion for the handsome and callow chevalier de Lorraine, on whose behalf he
begged Louis for the reversion of two abbeys. When the king refused, Monsieur left the court in a huff-Olivier Bernier points
out that Louis XIII's brother would have started a civil war in similar circumstances - and the chevalier was clapped in jail.
Humbled, Monsieur came crawling back and, when the chevalier was released, collapsed on the floor and embraced his brother's
knees in gratitude. All this was played out on the public stage.

Not even the royal children were spared the host's responsibility to entertain. As one eyewitness noted of the due de Bour-gogne's
wedding: "The new King [William III of England] has made his entry into London; the spectacle was very grand, but its expense
is nothing when compared to the marriage." After the ceremony and mass, a sumptuous meal was served to the royal family at
a great horseshoe-shaped table, which was followed by a game of cards, a fireworks display, and another banquet. Then the
entire party, now joined by the recently deposed James II of England and his queen, trooped off to the newlyweds' bedcham­ber:

The due de Bourgogne undressed himself in the anti-chamber, and the King of England presented him his shirt; the duchesse
de Bourgogne undressed herself before all the ladies who were in her chamber, and the Queen of England presented her her chemise.
As soon as the duchesse de Bourgogne was in bed, it was announced to the due de Bourgogne, who got into bed upon the right
side. The King and Queen of England retired. The King went to bed . . . The duchesse de Lude, and all the ladies of the duchesse
de Bourgogne, remained around the bed, the curtains of which were undrawn all round . . . The due de Beauvilliers, as governor
of the due de Bourgogne, remained by the bed-side while he was with the duchesse de Bourgogne.

The duke and new duchess were fifteen and twelve years old, respectively.

But even the travails and deflowerings of the royal family were not enough to keep the court quiescent and amused. Three times
a week, the
soirees d'appartementwere
held in the state apartments: beverages in the Abundance Salon, delicacies in the Venus Salon, dancing in the Mars Salon,
gaming in the Mercury Salon, and music in the Apollo Salon. There was theater by Moliere and Racine, music by Lully and Lalande.
There were Le Notre's magnificent two thousand acres of parkland and gardens reduced, sere, and dismal today by comparison
- with some twelve miles of roads and paths; hundreds of potted orange trees; fifty fountains; fifty-five acres of canal plied
by Venetian gondolas; the mysterious, eternally twilit Grotto of Thetis, now gone, and the Baths of Apollo; secluded alleys,
groves, and hidden trysting nooks. There were billiards and hunting and the endless composition of billets-doux. And, of course,
there was conversa­tion: the refined, literate, vicious conversation that seemed to have continued unabated for generations;
secretive conclaves in the corridors and stairwells; raucous outbursts in the gaming rooms; sweet plaintive pleadings in the
trellised arbors; ghostly whispers in the galleries at dead of night - as inexhaustible, inescapable, and penetrating as the
trickles, rivulets, and geysers of water pumped to every far corner of the vast estate.

But if all this still failed to distract the court - if, as Mme de Sevigne asserted, "the entertainments were to become boring
by their very multiplicity" - the king could always pull off the miracle of a perfectly choreographed fete, such as that held
on the night of July 18, 1668. Early in the evening, the king and queen set off for a stroll through the gardens, followed
by some twelve hundred courtiers, all of whom were aware that something was afoot but had no idea of what it might be. As
they turned a corner into a secluded alley, they came, almost as if by chance, upon a pentagonal structure made entirely of
woven branches. Within, five tables were set with delicacies: one had been built up to resemble a mountain, its caverns filled
with cold meats; another had become a palace, constructed entirely of marzipan and pastry; yet another was a pyramid of crystallized
fruit; the others held vases of liqueurs and platters of caramels, all charmingly draped in flowers. Potted orange trees were
hung with candied oranges, while, at the center of the structure, a thirty-foot fountain played. After the guests had refreshed
themselves, the king set out in his barouche, the queen in her chaise, and the courtiers followed in carriages. They passed
down a linden alley and came, again as if by magic, to a theater, with seating for two thousand, designed by Carlo Vigarani
and erected in secret over the past several days. It was covered by greenery without, by tapestries within, and was lit by
thirty-two crystal chandeliers hung from the rafters. The stage was flanked by columns of bronze and lapis. The play, a light
pastoral comedy by Moliere, was set in a garden, and the set designed to reveal the gardens behind, giving the impression
that the entire park was present onstage. After the show, the company headed out once again, led by His Majesty, who knew
just where he was going but managed to give the impression that he was following his whim. Next came ballet in an octagonal
dance hall clad in marble and porphyry, an equally temporary structure thrown up in a secluded nook of the gardens. After
another brief expedition, the company came upon an octagonal dining hall rampant with marble satyrs, dolphins, and gods. Fruit
trees and flowersfilled every available space. At the center of the room was a small mountain, crowned by a statue of Pegasus
and enlivened by tumbling streams, surrounded by a circular table set for 450 guests, who chose from among 280 dishes. The
rest of the group ate in side halls. Mme de Sevigne dined at the king's table, a moment she would never forget. As the
medianoche
wound down, the guests, always behind the king, began to wander back toward the chateau when suddenly the night exploded with
fireworks. The first were set off at some distance away, highlighting the palace, but gradually they drew closer and closer
until the company found itself entirely surrounded by jets of flame and sparks erupting from two hundred four-foot vases.
When these died down, to the relief of many, it appeared that the evening had come to an end, but just then the Grotto of
Thetis was set ablaze with Roman candles, the sky above it traced by rockets with Louis's double-L emblem. Timed to the very
minute, the sun rose just as the last spark went out, and the king and queen set off for Saint Germain in their carriage.

The fete had been pulled off at great expense, but that was hardly the point. The message that came through loud and clear
was that this was something only the Sun King could ever hope to pull off. The mere fact that ten thousand workers had labored
in total secrecy, practically under the very noses of the court, was nothing short of miraculous, but the true success lay
in the way it had been designed to highlight Louis's absolute authority. He had only to turn a corner, serene and unabashed,
for entire theaters, dance halls, and banquet halls to spring up in his path, mountains to rise, rivers to erupt. The very
statues "seemed to dance and express their pleasure at being visited by such a great monarch attended by such a fine court."
And the sun itself, "jealous of the perquisites of the night," kindly waits for the king's entertainments to end before showing
itself. In all of Le Pautre's engravings of the evening, the king is always in the center foreground, his back to the viewer,
at the heart of a throng and yet untouched and untouchable, entirely isolated in his glory.

What wouldn't you and I give to have been a member of that company and to bask in his presence? Since we weren't, we might
tell ourselves that, tempting as it sounds, we wouldn't have given up our freedom for it. But imagine, just for the sake of
argument, that it were possible. Imagine the thrill of receiving the most sought-after invitation, then multiply it a thousandfold,
because this is not an evening's glory but a lifetime's, an eternity's. You are not visiting, you are at home, among your
own, forever. Like being called to heaven, anything you need to let go of to get in is entirely expendable. Now what would
you give? Is there any way in which you would fail or refuse to conform? What possible attraction could there be in dissidence?

To submit to the etiquette of Versailles was to abandon any pretense, however forlorn, at being a free agent. Your choice
was stark and simple: give in or get out. In the king's house, you lived by the king's rules. Of course, Louis had not actually
invented etiquette, but he did perfect its evolution as an exquisite straitjacket. At Versailles, you quite literally could
not take a step, could not raise a spoon to your lips, could not powder your wig without first considering who you might offend
and whether they were in a position to punish you for it. With all their real power gone, the nobles bickered and litigated
with obsessive zeal over the infinite nuances of precedence. As Saint-Simon put it:

He was conscious that the substantial favours he had to bestow were not nearly sufficient to produce a continual effect; he
had therefore to invent imaginary ones, and no one was so clever in devising petty distinctions and preferences which aroused
jealousy and emulation.

The king employed a full-time official whose sole function was to rule in disputes over whose carriage might pass first through
a gate, who was allowed to step through a certain door ahead of whom. Mme de Sevigne relates an unseemly tussle between Mme
de Gevres and Mme d'Arpajon:

Mme d'Arpajon was ahead of me. I thought Gevres expected me to give her my place, but I owed her something from the other
day, and I paid her back in full and didn't budge. Mademoiselle [the duchesse de Lorraine] was on her bed. So she was compelled
to take her place at the bottom, below the dais - very annoying. Mademoiselle's drink was served and the serviette had to
be offered. I spied Mme de Gevres slipping her glove off her skinny hand. I nudged Mme d'Arpajon, who understood, took off
her own glove and advanced a step, cut out Gevres and took and offered the serviette. Gevres was covered with shame and looked
very sheepish.

In various forms, such silent struggles took place a thousand times a day at court, but it is certain that if the object of
servility had been a son of France or the king instead of his niece, the serviette skirmish would have ended in dangerously
bad blood, and perhaps bloodshed.

Of course, access to the king was strictly limited, as it was to varying degrees to all princes of the blood. The only place
one was allowed to follow the king was in the park, and only the highest ranking nobleman in the bedchamber was privileged
to hold His Majesty's candlestick at the
couchee.
Only the most exalted were permitted in the
ruelles
on either side of the bed.

But perhaps the strangest and most alien aspect of these rules was that governing the use of chairs. These rules were observed
with a prissy obsessiveness that appears to us to border on perversity. If you were not fully versed in every nicety of seating
etiquette - which was complicated by the fact that it was common to receive guests of inferior rank in bed - you could easily
find yourself in trouble. When Louis welcomed the exiled James II to France and established him at Saint-Germain, saying "this
is your home," Mme de Sevigne's very first thought was "I don't know how they will have arranged the princesses' chairs."
One of the first things out of La Grange's mouth in the opening scene of Moliere's
Les Precieuses ridicules
is "They could hardly bring themselves to ask us to sit down." And when Mademoiselle, heartbroken by the king's refusal to
allow her to marry her one true love, actually invited Mme de Sevigne to kneel down beside her bed, it was as if every social
barrier had been swept aside: "On this occasion," she confessed, "I have been through emotions one does not often feel for
people of such rank."