The Exchange of Princesses (33 page)

The infanta doesn’t grow, and she’s getting thinner. She’s lost her appetite for food as well as life. One day, Bébé IV, her sole remaining companion, shows her a plate of
crêmes frites
with an apricot coulis. They look good, he tells her, and they must be eaten hot — would Her Majesty like to try one?

“Oh!” she says, pointing to her mouth. “When you’ve had it up to here, you can’t eat.”

A Spaniard from the embassy attends one of the infanta’s suppers. He tells her that her mother and father are saddened by the passage of so many years without their daughter and would love to see her again.

“How do you know?”

He takes out a sheet of paper and reads it by the firelight. It’s news from Spain; it reports that the king and queen are going to visit their kingdom, that they will come very near Bayonne, and that, since they will be at the French border, they would love to kiss the infanta. “Will Your Majesty agree to go?” asks the Spaniard.

The infanta senses some confusion. Why is this man, whom she barely knows, the one proposing this journey? Why isn’t it
Maman Ventadour? Maman Ventadour is not the same as she once was. It’s as though she were in hiding, or hiding something … But of course Mariana Victoria accepts, she misses her parents and her brothers. Besides, from the way the matter is presented, it sounds like only a brief sojourn. She says, “Yes, it would be a great pleasure for me to see them, too,” but she doesn’t feel any pleasure. And having said those words, in which she’s heard the click of the trap closing on her, she leaves the supper table. Carmen-Doll withdraws to work on the great gathering of dolls. At Versailles, even if the majority of the dolls normally live in the queen-infanta’s apartments, that doesn’t stop some of them from nosing around outside their territory. It’s possible to come across one mixing with the riffraff in the kitchens of the Grand Commons or outside the Little Stables. Carmen-Doll works fast. She sends messengers to all the palaces where the infanta has stayed. At Fontainebleau, the forgotten dolls have already been put under covers. By bribing the official in charge of furniture storage, the infanta achieves their liberation.

Carmen-Doll is relentless in making sure that not a single one of the infanta’s dolls remains on French soil. The dolls shut up in the trunk can’t believe their good fortune. They exercise discretion. The important thing is to be included in the baggage.

Louise Élisabeth is counting the days. The palace she’s been relegated to resembles a prison. Perhaps it’s her last accommodations. She’s not authorized to go about in Burgos, and in any case the notion wouldn’t occur to her. She eats everything she can, becomes fat and soft. A perpetual expression of alarm causes people to take her for an imbecile. The dowager queen, her rare visitors say, “has no more resolution than a seven-year-old child,” whereas the infanta, seven years old herself, continues to surprise those around her with observations worthy of a young woman of eighteen or twenty. Not that this plays to her advantage; it’s interpreted as a slightly monstrous anomaly. Deficient or too precocious, too fat or too thin, weak-willed or too decisive, already worn out or too young, henceforth neither the one nor the other can ever please.

When the order is finally given for her departure for France, Louise Élisabeth is not reassured. How will things be on the other side? How will she be treated? “Badly, very badly,” the atonal, metallic voice replies for her, the soft and maniacal voice of her madness. “Do you really want to know any more about it, piece of trash, putrid little tramp? Well, suppose you start by washing a few handkerchiefs, and then I shall see …” Lying abed in the middle of the day with her head under a blanket, Louise Élisabeth escapes. It’s not that she doesn’t have the strength to fight, it’s that she has
no strength at all, neither to resist nor to obey. She has no energy for anything, not even her caprices.

During the trip, she keeps the curtains down and doesn’t seem to recognize her entourage. She’s a package easily forwarded.

It’s early in the morning. The Sun Palace is outlined against a cold light. The shutters are still closed on most of the apartments of the great château. Mme de Ventadour, desolated with sorrow, hardly shows herself. It’s obvious that the infanta has her doubts about her parents’ alleged request. It had been thought that drowsiness would help to soften the violence of the departure, but she’s thoroughly alert, as is her habit. She considers what’s around her attentively and precisely, as if while looking she were already beginning to remember. Her vivaciousness makes people ill at ease. The farewells and the plans for her near return ring false. She contains herself and pretends to believe. At the moment when she climbs up into the carriage, she doesn’t even ask where the king is. Great infanta.

Once again they meet, headed in opposite directions. When they cross over the border, they do not kiss. The original exchange is made in reverse. The dowager queen of Spain for the queen-infanta of France. A half-mad teenager for a deposed child.

All the extracts from correspondence quoted in this book are authentic. The letters or excerpts from letters written by Elisabeth Farnese, Luis I, Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Mariana Victoria de Borbón, Philip V, and Madame de Ventadour are mainly to be found in the Historical Archive in Madrid and are, for the most part, unpublished.

Press extracts are drawn from the
Gazette
, which after 1762 was called the
Gazette de France
.

Mariana Victoria de Borbón, in French Marie Anne Victoire, infanta of Spain, known after her marriage to Louis XV as the queen-infanta of France. She was born on March 31, 1718. Eventually, in 1729, she married the Prince of Brazil, who later ascended the throne of Portugal as José I, and with whom she had four daughters. Her husband being ill, she assumed the regency of that country from 1776 until her death in 1781. She was Marie Antoinette’s godmother.

Louis XV, king of France. Born at Versailles on February 15, 1710. After his marriage to Mariana Victoria was annulled, in September 1725 he married Marie Lesczynska (she was seven years older than Louis, the queen-infanta had been seven years younger, balance was restored!). Eleven children were born of this union. Louis XV died on May 10, 1774, at Versailles, after a reign of nearly sixty years.

Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Mlle de Montpensier, Princess of Asturias after her marriage in 1722 to Don Luis, Prince
of Asturias, and then queen of Spain —
Reina Luisa Isabel de Orléans
. She was born at Versailles on December 11, 1709, and died in Paris on June 16, 1742, completely neglected. She became dowager queen of Spain at the age of fifteen and never remarried.

Don Luis, Prince of Asturias, then king of Spain as Luis I. His reign lasted seven and a half months. He was born on August 25, 1707, and died in Madrid on August 31, 1724, at the age of seventeen. His tomb is in El Escorial.