The Exchange of Princesses (3 page)

This conversation, however, goes differently. The regent’s in excellent humor, proud of his news, proud of the secret he wants to confide to his friend. Saint-Simon has grievances: he’s never been invited to any of the Palais-Royal dinners given in the pink-and-gold dining room, cushioned like a jewelry casket (no matter that the mere thought of those orgies repels him, especially the fact that His Highness the Duke d’Orléans, a grandson of France, acts as the
chef), and his opinions are rarely heeded in the Regency Council — without counting the thousand daily wounds he suffers from barbarians who don’t respect the rules of etiquette and the permanent scandal caused by the arrogance of Louis XIV’s bastards, who are in ascendance everywhere. But Saint-Simon is so flattered and touched by his friend’s demonstration of confidence in him that he forgets all complaints. He takes pleasure in recalling the scene:

Perhaps Saint-Simon finds the difference in rank between the betrothed parties surprising, but he’s especially flabbergasted by the spectacular nature of the reversal by which the son of the king of Spain — upon whom, two years
previously, the regent declared war — has become his future son-in-law.

Upon learning of these impending marriages between France and Spain, between the French Bourbons and the Spanish Bourbons, this creation of alliances between the continent’s two most powerful kingdoms, uniting two branches of a single family — in other words, the realization of Europe’s worst fears — Saint-Simon’s immediate reaction is to advise keeping the matter a deep secret, so as not to infuriate the other countries. For once, the Duke d’Orléans can give him a guilt-free response: “You are right, of course, but that is impossible, because the Spanish desire to announce the declarations of marriage at once, and they wish to send the Infanta here as soon as the proposal is made and the marriage contract signed.” Curious haste, Saint-Simon points out, given the ages of the four young persons involved. Their betrothals are admittedly premature. The Prince of Asturias is fourteen years of age, the regent’s daughter twelve. Louis XV, born February 15, 1710, is but eleven. And as for Mariana Victoria, the infanta of Spain, her date of birth was March 31, 1718. Louis XV’s future wife, the future queen of France, is not yet four years old!

Saint-Simon doesn’t find the ages of the betrothed parties surprising, in fact doesn’t give them a single thought, and in this he resembles the authors of the agreement. What stuns him is the audacious stroke of marrying a daughter of the House of Orléans to a son of Philip V, a man veritably steeped in hatred for that family and for the regent in particular. A little later in the interview, having recovered from
his amazement, Saint-Simon thinks about drawing some personal advantage from the project. He asks the regent to appoint him to bring the marriage contract to the court of Madrid for signing. In the same breath, he proposes to bring along his two sons, Jacques-Louis, Vidame de Chartres, and Armand-Jean, in order to obtain for them and himself the title of grandee of Spain. Saint-Simon desires grandeur. The regent smiles. For if the Duke de Saint-Simon is
pas grand
— that is, not tall — his elder son, Jacques-Louis, is even shorter than his father. His nickname is “the Basset.”

The regent accepts. Saint-Simon, therefore, will be the “ambassador extraordinary” for a far from ordinary marriage.

Saying Yes with a Bad Grace

In the beginning of August, a messenger from Philip V arrives at the Palais-Royal, the regent’s Parisian residence, with dispatches confirming that “His Catholic Majesty, in order to give His Royal Highness indubitable proofs of H.C.M.’s friendship, affection, and desire to maintain immutably good terms with the King, with his own family, and with H.R.H. the Regent, requests his daughter H.R.H. Mlle de Montpensier’s hand in marriage to H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias, and proposes at the same time the marriage of the Infanta of Spain, H.C.M.’s only daughter, to the King.”

Among those close to the Duke d’Orléans, joy is total. That the king of Spain should be offering his son, the Prince of Asturias, the successor to the Spanish throne, in
marriage to one of the regent’s daughters is indeed pretty incredible. But this is the necessary condition for the marriage of the infanta to Louis XV. The marriage of Mlle de Montpensier, born of the terribly discordant union between the Duke d’Orléans and Mlle de Blois, bastard daughter of Louis XIV and his mistress Mme de Montespan, is part of the deal. The young girl’s father informs her in passing of her betrothal. Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, known as Mlle de Montpensier, is a barely domesticated child, having been raised in a state of sumptuous neglect. She was removed from the convent at the age of five and like her sisters has been more or less forgotten ever since. Their mother has no interest in her numerous and useless female progeny. Their father’s idea of educating them is to take them to the theater from time to time. Perhaps Mlle de Montpensier rebels against her father. If so, the offense, like everything she says and does from now on, will be charged to her bad character. An ugly child when she was little, she’s grown much prettier but hasn’t become any more sociable. She’s silent, hobbled by a sort of chronic ill will, by a solitariness that turns people away from her. In response to the latest twist in her fate, she tries on a Spanish dress and, thus arrayed, walks around the palace. She shows herself to the Princess Palatine, her grandmother, who writes: “It’s amazing how Spanish she seems — she’s very serious, almost never laughs, talks very little. She came to see me a few days ago wearing a Spanish dress; it suited her much better than French clothes do.” Does this mean that her whole Spanish existence is going to suit her better than her life in France? Her grandmother jokingly calls her “the Spanish fly.” Louise
Élisabeth doesn’t much like joking, and she’s not certain it’s a well-intentioned joke anyway.

Luis, Prince of Asturias, son of Philip V and his deceased first wife Maria Luisa of Savoy, is two years older than his proposed fiancée and thus better able to speak his mind; nevertheless, his acceptance is gained with as little difficulty as hers. Philip V summons the boy. His marriage is announced to him as a settled matter. The possibility that he might have an opinion about it is excluded a priori. In all haste, a portrait of Mlle de Montpensier is brought from Paris and given to the prince. As he shares his father’s sexual disposition, he wears himself out masturbating over the image of his future bride. Semen spatters the fiancée’s face — her lovely eyes, full lips, strong nose. The portrait is removed from Prince Luis’s chamber.

On the other hand, there is one person whose opinion is indispensable: Louis XV. The fact that he’s only eleven in no way authorizes his subjects to disregard his views. It should be an easy matter to coerce acquiescence from a boy of his age, but the regent’s not certain of success. And without Louis XV’s consent, the entire scheme will collapse. Broaching the subject of marriage to the young king, a nervous, melancholic, suspicious child, is not a prospect the regent relishes. The king dreads surprises, from which he expects only catastrophes. When he was still very little, he fell ill and cried out to his Maman Ventadour, “I’m dead”; later, having experienced his first ejaculation, he will be convinced he’s unwell and consult his valet de chambre. Since he has spent much the greater part of his young life in an orphan’s solitude, his early childhood darkened by the succession of deaths in his family
and by the malevolent rumors they nourished, mistrust is his first reaction. This tendency is only enhanced by the fear he constantly reads in the eyes of his entourage, prominent among them his elderly tutor, Marshal de Villeroy: the fear that he too, the boy-king, will perish. Marshal de Villeroy never leaves his side, day or night. He sleeps beside his bed and permits nobody but himself to offer him a handkerchief. He monitors the slightest gesture made by the king or to the king at table, carries the key to the butter dish destined for the king’s use, and would in no circumstances, not even under torture, agree to resign his post.

As a child of five, Louis XV was brought to his great-grandfather Louis XIV’s deathbed, kissed his august ancestor, and heard him predict, “Little one, you are going to be a great king …”; now the boy uses that memory as a charm capable of making the Grim Reaper delay his scything. Brutally sudden death frightens the young king. When it’s transmuted into a religious rite, he pays it homage without difficulty and even, deep down, loves it. Raised to be a Most Christian sovereign, he accepts the daily duty of attending at least one Mass as a natural occurrence, like opening his eyes in the morning and receiving the first courtiers admitted to his
petit lever
, his rising ceremony. But more often than not, because of the solemnities attached to the continually recurring feast days and the mourning that’s so much a part of his family history, other religious services are added to his daily routine. His life is punctuated by requiems, Masses for the dead. His birthday falls between the anniversaries of his father’s and mother’s deaths on the twelfth and eighteenth of February. On April 14, he attends the Requiem Mass for the grand dauphin, his
grandfather; on July 30, the date of his great-grandmother Maria Theresa of Spain’s death, he attends the requiem for her; and on September 1, the one for Louis XIV, who died on that date in 1715. Death thus embalmed, thus inscribed in the squares of the sacred calendar and in a schedule of ceremonies whose details (bows, genuflections, benedictions, psalms, canticles, prayers) he’s quite mastered, no longer has anything in common with catastrophe. This child, everyone says admiringly, was born for ceremonies. In them he displays a diligence and a staying power exceptional for his age. He’s compared to Louis XIV, every minute of whose reign had to belong to some form of ritual. Etiquette is a Mass; the boy has instinctively understood that.

But Louis XV’s history is all his own, and he preserves it as the only way of maintaining contact with his family: from Te Deum to Te Deum, he’s reminded that his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents really existed, and that between the Paradise where they reside and the court of France over which he reigns, the passage is constant.

After postponing his task several times over the course of more than a month, the regent chooses a day when the Regency Council is meeting, so that if Louis XV’s answer is yes, as anticipated, the regent will be able to make the announcement to the members of the council. On the morning of September 14, after dithering for a few moments in the anteroom, he enters the king’s chamber in the Tuileries Palace. To give himself courage and to make a stronger impression on his young sovereign, the regent has brought along Cardinal Dubois, M. le Duc (Henri de Bourbon-Condé, who
supervises Louis XV’s education), Marshal de Villeroy, and the Bishop of Fréjus. Saint-Simon, along with other courtiers but even more impatient than they because more directly concerned, is waiting outside. Unable to hold out any longer, they leave the anteroom and penetrate into the royal apartments: “The King’s back,” Saint-Simon writes,

A little later, the regent hurriedly confides to Saint-Simon that upon hearing the news of his marriage, the king burst out weeping, and that they — the regent, M. le Duc, and the Bishop of Fréjus — “had been hard put to extract a yes from him, and then afterward had met with the same reluctance on his part to go to the Regency Council.” These are men used to overcoming opposition. Princes, diplomats, army generals, they surround the boy. They trot out their repertoire of bows and bombastic formulas, and they’re sure they can talk him into yielding. The balance of power is too unequal. However, in spite of his eleven years, he’s the king,
and they’re his subjects; consequently, there remains the tiny but real possibility that His Majesty will say no, or that His Majesty will react as he is already wont to do, by taking refuge in silence, by retreating into a sulk from which there is no appeal and thus mutely stating his refusal. His tutor, even though he opposes the project, insists: “Come, my master, the thing must be done with a good grace.” The boy-king murmurs a distraught yes, a yes with a bad grace. Yes to the marriage and yes to the announcement of the marriage in the present session of the Regency Council. The circle of powerful men breathes a collective sigh of relief. The boy resumes weeping. And not with just one eye, but with both, and with all his heart. Barely recovered, he appears before the Regency Council, where people remark his swollen eyes. When the regent asks him if he “thinks it well” that the regent announce the marriage to the council, the boy nods. “There we are then, Sire, your marriage is approved and passed, and a great and fortunate business settled,” says the Duke d’Orléans.