The Cat and the King (17 page)

“And leave me clean? Leave me pure?”

“Why not?”

“What of the king? How will he react to these revelations?”

“That will be the concern of the duchesse de Bourbon.”

“I care nothing about her. Or even about the dauphin. But I care about my uncle. Is this a time to burden him with further worries?”

“With all due respect, sir, I suggest that the king is not a sensitive man. He will be perfectly unaffected.”

“Ah, you don't know him!” Orléans turned from his work table now and guided me to a corner where there were two large
bergères.
“I decided, when I heard you were coming today, that I should have to tell you a story.”

“And what story is that?”

“Sit down and let me pour you a glass of wine. I want to tell you about myself and the king. Things that even
you
don't know, Monsieur de Saint-Simon!”

W
HAT YOU
must try to understand, Saint-Simon, is that my father was only part of a family tragedy. The other, the much larger part of it, was the king. Think of those two lonely little boys at four and two, one the mightiest of monarchs (or so people told him); the other, his heir. Of course they had a mother, but my grandmother was entranced and preoccupied with her delightful new position as queen-regent, bowed to and flattered by everybody, an elevation all the headier for having been preceded by twenty years of neglect and humiliation, years in which she had been ignored by her husband, bullied by his iron cardinal, taunted for her long infertility and even menaced with exile.

So all was sudden heaven for Queen Anne in 1643. A pesky spouse was dead; an officious Richelieu was dead; a beautiful kingdom was in her hands; and she was not too old—at forty-two—to enjoy it all to the full. As for the two little boys, well, were there not enough people to look after them, hundreds and hundreds of people? And Giulio Mazarini was so handsome, so vigorous, so beguiling. I have always wondered if he didn't marry my grandmother. After all, he was only a cardinal, not a priest. He perfectly well could have.

Even the Fronde did not altogether spoil Queen Anne's fun. I think in some ways it may have even enhanced it. There must have been romance in the excitement, the bustle, the rushing from castle to castle, the appealing to armies, a beautiful, harassed widow clutching her two infants to her side. And Mazarin was there, always there, to support her, to love her, to make the plans, to take the blame.

When it was over, and she had made him, or allowed him to make himself, the master of France, he turned his attention to her sons. Acting, let us presume, for the sake of his soul, if he had one, in what he deemed the best interests of the nation, but proceeding to his goal with the deliberation and ruthlessness of his fellow countryman Machiavelli, he set about the task of turning the elder boy into a great king and the younger into a creature who would never rival a great king. Richelieu, his preceptor, had taught him what a thorn in the side Gaston d'Orléans had been to Louis XIII. This could not be allowed to happen again.

And so, while my uncle was trained with arms and exercises, my father was encouraged to sniff scents and play with jewelry. One was encouraged to believe that beautiful women had been created only for his lust; the other was surrounded with pretty boys coached in vice. The plan worked. If my uncle became a monster of egotism, he also became strong and disciplined, perhaps the most perfect prince ever reared and trained for a throne. My poor father, on the other hand, became... well, you know only too well what he became. Yet even Mazarin was unable quite to keep his natural talents down. When Monsieur, after the cardinal's death, finally succeeded in obtaining a command in the field, he did so well that he had to be brought home!

The remarkable thing is that the two brothers always loved each other. I sometimes wonder if either of them ever really loved anyone else. It was as if, isolated by their rank from the rest of the world, fatherless and, as I have explained, almost motherless, they recognized that what was being done to them would have been, had their ages been reversed, itself reversed; that they had only themselves to cling to and to trust in a universe that, for its own arcane reasons, had to put them in gilt cages and stare at them and, from time to time, even poke at them through the bars.

Oh, I know, of course, that the king adored Marie Mancini and that he had a kind of passion for the Vallière and the Montespan, and I suppose you might say that Monsieur loved the Chevalier. But those were matters of Eros. Do you suppose the king ever loved his own children or grandchildren? You have seen how he is with them. He likes to have them constantly about him, and he is perfectly willing to give them money and honors, but he never allows intimacies, and they're all in holy terror of him, except the little duchesse de Bourgogne, and she's treated more like a kitten than a grandchild. And my father, although he was friendly and gregarious, was basically as reserved as his brother. It was only when you saw him joking or quarreling with the king that you had a sense that they were both human beings with a human bond between them.

Unless there was something of one between Monsieur and myself. I think he wanted it; I know that I did. But he was always afraid that I was going to be shocked by his sex life. He was glad, I believe, that I did not share his inclinations, but it still made him shy with me. I think our first intimate moment came when he took up my defense with Mother after she discovered that, at the age of fifteen, I had impregnated one of her chambermaids.

Had this happened at Versailles or with a member of my father's household, it would have been only an occasion for lewd jokes or even congratulations. But Mother had a Germanic prudishness and set great store by the virtue of her retainers. The poor girl was shown the gate, and I had my ears soundly boxed. You will remember, Saint-Simon, that Madame maintained this practice right up until my marriage! And I'm not sure if I'm entirely safe to this day.

Monsieur took me aside and spoke to me with a gentleness I had not had from him before.

“Philippe, my dear, you are obviously a man now. And you're a man the way men should be. For all your mother's anger, she's basically proud of you. She has always dreaded that you might turn out... well, like somebody else. I never thought you would turn out other than you have. You will have the life I might have had. You will be happy, my boy, if I can make you happy. Bless you, my child!”

I burst into tears and threw my arms around him. It was the first time in my life that either of my parents had expressed so warm a concern. But there were other consequences of the chambermaid incident. When the Chevalier de Lorraine, attracted, no doubt, by the gossip of my sexual prowess, made a pass at me in the hall of armor, my one concern in resisting him was to do so in a way that no guards or ushers should observe. I placed one hand firmly over his lips and with the other twisted his arm behind his back.

“When I let you go, keep your mouth shut, you filthy pervert! If you try this again, I'll kill you. But Monsieur must never know. Is that clear?”

The Chevalier was smart enough to realize that I meant what I said. He had nothing to fear from me; I would never reveal to my father his aborted “infidelity.” But his hatred was something that I had to be on my guard against right up to the day of my father's death.

Monsieur's behavior in respect to my marriage was typical of all that he tried and failed to do for me. He would approach the king about a command for me, or a governorship, or a foreign princess as a bride; he would set forth, in his nervous, excited fashion, all of his good reasons. The king would listen benignly, and Monsieur would come rushing back to me to tell me in exultation that he had carried his point. Time would pass, and nothing would happen. Monsieur would go again to the king and receive the famous, friendly “Have a chair, my brother.” Then would follow the royal arguments, gravely and succinctly stated, against the particular proposition. Monsieur would raise his voice; Monsieur would even weep; but he never carried the day. The last argument that he had with the king, over my continued enforced idleness, brought on his fatal stroke.

Even after my father's death the king remained faithful to Mazarin's policy of keeping down the Orléans. Nothing would induce him to allow me to play a major role in the army or in the government. Nothing, that is, but dire necessity. The time at last came in this war when things were going so badly that he needed every available male of the blood royal at the different fronts to bolster morale, and I found myself at last in Spain. Well, my spirits were so exuberant that I drank too much at a military banquet at Madrid and made the famous toast that you know all about. That was bad enough, but worse was to follow: my unfortunate session with the grandees over the rumored abdication of Philippe V.

This is how it happened. It was in my tent, two days after my victory at Lérida. I was told of the arrival of a distinguished deputation, and I assumed that it was a visit of official congratulation. Victories in the Franco-Spanish army had been too few to be ignored. Well, you know how ceremonious our southern neighbors can be. It was only after an hour of soft harangues that I began to take in that we were discussing something other than my military prowess. It was actually being suggested that a possible basis for peace might be worked out with the substitution of myself for Philippe V on the Spanish throne! The argument was that England, Holland and the empire might be satisfied by the removal of a grandson of Louis XIV in favor of his nephew! The victory for them would be in obliging the king of France to rescind his initial act, which had caused the war. The face-saving for us would be that a French prince would still be king.

I listened, Saint-Simon. It was all I did. I listened because I was intrigued. Here at last was the unlooked-for chance of glory! Away from Versailles, away from France, what an opportunity for a new life, a new career! To say nothing of the occasion to lead a benighted old kingdom out of the dark ages in which it has more or less indolently lingered. Would I have been taking anything from my cousin, Philippe V, that he was not going to lose anyway? Was it not even evident that the poor young man disliked the crown his grandfather had so remorselessly clamped on his reluctant head? Mightn't my uncle-father-in-law and I get on better as fellow sovereigns, with several hundred blessed miles between us? And why should I not be a king in Madrid? Was I not a great-grandson of Philippe IV and a half-brother of the unhappy, late lamented Queen Marie-Louise?

Well, of course, it all looked very different to Versailles. Monseigneur was livid. He told his father that I was planning to assassinate his son. Madame de Maintenon, recalling my infamous toast, made the welkin ring with her complaints. Ugliest of all was the charge that, as a French general, I had been disloyal to my commander-in-chief. I was summoned home to report. The dreaded word “treason” was on every tongue.

I confess I did not know what to expect. My wife was very fine. She brushed aside the long history of my infidelities and appeared everywhere at my side. She said she would go to her father, but I knew how little the king was swayed by his daughters. I found myself shunned by all. My very appearance at a chamber at Versailles was enough to send people flying to doors and corners. And then I was told that the king would see me. Alone.

When the doors of his study were closed, he rose and approached me. He was serious, but not severe.

“My nephew,” he said gravely, “I have read all the reports. I know that you listened to treasonable talk. It was very foolish of you, but it was only that. You have many vices, my friend, but there is no disloyalty in your nature, as there was none in your father's. You and I have had our differences. No doubt you have found me harsh, even cruel. It is not easy to be a monarch. But I do only what I think I must do. I have never been swayed by affection or by dislike from the performance of my duties.” Now he even smiled! “I should not trust you, sir, with a young wife if I had one, but I trust you absolutely as a soldier and as a friend!”

Well, what would
you
have done, Saint-Simon? I fell to my knees and wept. And do you think now, in the midst of a terrible war, with every sword in Europe pointing at that old man's heart, I'm going to add to his woes by shrill complaints about his daughter and his heir?

M
ONSEIGNEUR
rarely came to a Marly weekend. Mademoiselle Choin was not welcome there, as the presence together of the two morganatic spouses of the two highest men of the land might have given rise to some degree of smothered hilarity. The awe and dignity of Madame de Maintenon's position depended on its uniqueness; having no rank in a court of rigid hierarchies gave her a detachment, an isolation and, ultimately, an elevation, that were superior to the very grandest title. But if there were two of them, they would constitute a kind of class, and a class would have to be ranked, and theirs would not be the first.

The dauphin was a stout, stupid, occasionally amiable man, with a remarkable memory for trivia in the few areas of life that interested him. He could, for example, and would, alas, insist on telling you precisely how many stags, how many boars, even how many pheasants had been killed in the royal hunts over the past decade, contrasting the number at Versailles with that at Fontainebleau and with that at Chambord, and ascribing to the variations all kinds of tiresome reasons. He had been fond of his three sons, but since Bourgogne had been drawn by his wife into Madame de Maintenon's camp and Anjou had gone to Spain, he had been reduced, as an affectionate parent, pretty much to Berry, a big, handsome, friendly young man, without a brain in his head, who also lived to hunt.

At the important Marly weekend to which I now address myself,
Monseigneur was present, as were Berry and Madame la Duchesse (de Bourbon). The candidacy of Mademoiselle de Valois was now being openly discussed, and the dauphin made no effort to conceal his strong disapproval of it. In the presence of the king he was, as always, mute and ill at ease, a gawky, foot-shifting, fifty-year-old schoolboy. But away from the royal presence he could be explosively disagreeable, and it was my fate to feel the full brunt of his displeasure.