The Exchange of Princesses (7 page)

The signing of the contract takes place in the Great Hall. While the document is being read aloud, the infanta has a flash of understanding: she’s going to marry the king of
France. Her mother holds the infanta’s writing hand while she signs. Mariana Victoria concentrates on her task with all her might, leaning so far forward that her cheek and almost her lips graze the paper, like a first kiss to her little husband and great king.

Everyone’s surprised by the bride-to-be’s patience during the session; by contrast, her mother the queen asks aloud at one point, “Will this go on much longer?” When the infanta is offered the portrait of Louis XV surrounded by diamonds, she receives it like a reward. She asks if she can keep it. “Of course,” she’s told. “It belongs to you, it’s your husband’s portrait, he was happy to send it to you.” When the Prince of Asturias hears these words, he’s moved to protest. The portrait of
his
future spouse was taken away from him; he demands that it be returned. “No,” is his stepmother Elisabeth’s only reply. Perhaps he thinks of his own mother then, of his grief at having lost her, and feels with increased weight the unhappy burden of being so alone between this wily Italian woman and his melancholy father. Perhaps, not only because of sexual frustration but also out of a desperate innocence, he wants Mlle de Montpensier to be a companion that he can love.

“Where is she?” he asks. “Where is the princess on her journey?”

That evening, in an immense room sparkling with candlelight and shimmering with the reflections of gold and bronze and marble, the king and queen give a magnificent ball. They themselves remain at one end of the room, facing the entrance, with the infanta by their side. They’re sitting
on high gilt armchairs, behind which red velvet stools have been placed for important personages. Along one wall, other stools and cushions are occupied by the wives of the grandees of Spain and their eldest sons, while the girls are on the floor, on the carpets that cover the whole room. On the other side, facing the women and the young people, some courtiers are standing in front of the windows. In an adjoining room, wine flows in profusion and tables are laden with the most extravagant tiered cakes and pastries of all sorts. Everyone chats and laughs and exchanges courteous gestures as sensual as caresses. The general joy is like an undulating streamer that springs from the hands of the royal couple and their daughter. And it’s at the instant when this ribbon touches Saint-Simon that he, who so far has been brilliant and valiant and practically possessed by his mission, starts to feel himself going down.

He’s feverish and parched, but he doesn’t have the strength to stand up and go into the next room, where wine is streaming in fountains, to have a drink. Nevertheless, he’s happy; since the cause for celebration is the infanta’s marriage, this party’s in his honor as well. He therefore remains seated, perspiring, a little sick, but also satisfied. The king and queen dance. He admires them wholeheartedly and is considering taking his leave when he’s spotted by an old acquaintance from Paris, a woman more than fifty years old, who — no, it’s not possible! — who apparently has the perverse intention of making him dance. Panic! Saint-Simon hides behind a column; his persecutrix catches him out and drags him before the king and queen, and it’s from Their Majesties themselves that he receives the
order
to dance. He tries to be excused on
the grounds of his fatigue, his age, his utter incompetence in the matter of dancing, but in vain; his protests produce the opposite effect. The duke does as he’s told. Minuets, contredanses, chaconnes — nothing is spared him. He feels as if he’s going to die dancing. He has to be laid down, fanned, given a glass of wine to drink, and transported to his coach. The ball is indifferent to his fate and continues without him. The king, the queen, the Prince of Asturias, and all the court, young and old, dance until dawn.

The infanta is implored to be a good girl at the ball. She’s a wife and a queen, yes, but too little to avoid being knocked about by other dancers. As is the case wherever she goes, she’s accompanied by her governess, the Duchess de Montellano, who sits on a red velvet stool behind her and watches her. Despite the duchess’s remonstrations, the infanta taps her feet to the rhythm so insistently that she’s taken down from her high, golden-fringed armchair and authorized to dance with her brother Don Carlos. The entire ball stops to look at the brother and sister, so charming and joyful as they hop about in time to the music. While being escorted back to their rooms, they’re able to admire the fires and illuminations burning in celebration all over Madrid. They slip behind the curtains and stand there holding hands with their noses pressed against the window. This is one of their games: hiding behind curtains, pressing their noses against the misted windowpanes, and making nose drawings on the glass.

On the evening in late November when she and her parents, accompanied by a grand cortege, make their way to the Royal Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha, Mariana Victoria
is even prettier than the little girl in white in Velázquez’s painting. Much prettier, in her gold and lilac crinoline. Not because of the crinoline, but because of her excitement at the sight of the huge, incredible gift she’s been given: the city of Madrid, her city, celebrating in her honor. Rich cloths adorn the windows of the buildings the cortege passes, and upon the company’s return from the basilica, the Plaza Mayor is all lit up. And for a change, the child doesn’t hear the upsetting cries of “
Viva la Savoyana! Viva la Savoyana!
” The people greet the royal family with cheers and acclamations: “
Viva Mariana Victoria! Viva la reina de Francia!
”

The infanta has a passion for the ladies of the palace. They wear dresses as multicolored as parrot feathers and make even more noise than parrots do. Seated on carpets with their legs folded under them and their skirts spread out around them, they kiss the infanta, passing her from one to the other. The little girl, intoxicated by being whirled about, caresses the ladies, inhales them, clings to one’s necklace, keeps another’s flower, sucks a piece of chocolate. The ladies smell of amber and oranges. The infanta is suffused by their perfumes, by their warmth. She’s fond of heady scents, smacking kisses, full-throated songs. That evening, they kiss and hug her harder than usual, take her hands and make her jump along with them in their dances. Mariana Victoria shouts with fear and pleasure. She continually wants to start over again. The ladies of the palace are like her, always ready to start over again. And later in the night, when they’re told that the party’s over, that they have to let the infanta leave, a leaden weight comes down on their gathering. They fall
silent, stretch out on their carpets, light candles. Waving their fans, they bid her farewell. The infanta sees them disappear in a blaze.

To Lerma, Slowly

The departure for France takes place twice. First the infanta leaves Madrid for Lerma. Her parents make regular sojourns in the palace near the Alarzón River built by the Duke of Lerma, the favorite of Philip III, and she has often traveled there, though never with so much baggage and so numerous an entourage; however, she doesn’t differentiate between what belongs to the royal retinue and what to her own. The departure seems precipitous to her. She’s not allowed to bid farewell to Don Fernando, who’s in bed with measles, or to Don Carlos, who’s showing early symptoms of the same disease.

The impressive cortege makes its first stop at Alcalá de Henares, which lies only a short distance from Madrid. Thus the pace of the infanta’s journey has been set: incredibly slow, little more than a standstill. To go from Madrid to Lerma, the court will take fifteen days — fifteen days to cover around fifty leagues, which averages out to less than three and a half leagues (around nine miles) per day — enough time for the twenty-five-year-old Marquise de Crèvecoeur, one of the queen’s most beautiful maids of honor, to die.

Mariana Victoria is a particularly beloved little girl, always the center of attention. This makes her dance about,
but sometimes, for no apparent reason, she starts to cry and buries her face in Maria Nieves’s bosom.

In Lerma, the court adopts a somewhat livelier rhythm — but barely, for the king is suffering a crisis of melancholia, and neither the constant presence of Elisabeth Farnese nor the singing of the castrato Valeriano Pellegrini suffices to lift him out of his personal abyss. Aware that something serious is afoot, the infanta refuses to be separated from Maria Nieves for a second. This dark-haired, pink-skinned, radiantly healthy young woman represents for the child a distillation of her obscure memories as a contented nursling while simultaneously embodying in a single person Mariana Victoria’s multiple, supple, warm, glowing, and much-loved palace ladies.

The portrait of Louis XV, sparkling in its diamond frame, joins the images before which Mariana Victoria says her prayers. She prays to it fervently and starts to live in its sight. Her parents lavish all sorts of considerations upon her. Everywhere she goes, her brother the Prince of Asturias takes great care to step aside so that she can precede him. M. de Popoli, the prince’s tutor, gives him back the portrait of Mlle de Montpensier, which shows her fair complexion, her black hair, her almond-shaped eyes, her unsmiling lips. She’s an attractive girl. If she were a flower, she’d be a periwinkle, the prince says to himself, slipping his hand inside his underclothes. He’s exercising his willpower. He doesn’t masturbate until after he’s said his prayers. He often talks about his fiancée with his brother and even with his stepmother. He asks again, “Where is Mlle de Montpensier? Where is the princess on her journey?”

Distraught Missive

The princess herself couldn’t say. She’s been traveling for a month and has but the dimmest idea of her current location. Ensconced in the eight-horse carriage she seldom leaves, Louise Élisabeth plays cards, quarrels with her governess, flies into absurd rages, spends entire days sulking, obtains permission to take walks in the rain, catches cold, and pretends there’s nothing wrong — up to a certain point, namely while traversing the Blaye region near Bordeaux. In the “Naval Palace,” specially built for her arrival, the little girl looks quite pale and shaky, despite the calm surface of the water.

And so Mlle de Montpensier is in the Bordelais. A land of vineyards and gently rolling hills. Low skies, the beige waters of the Garonne River, the white stone and red roof tiles of the middle-class houses — these would fill her view, if she would only raise her eyes from the black interior of her coach, which swallows her up. She’s too young and too
chaotic to make sulking a way of life, but she gives herself over without resistance to her dark moods, as though guided by a compass of despair. When stormy weather rendered it impossible to sail from Italy to Spain and Elisabeth Farnese had to make an overland journey of three months to get from Parma to Madrid, she employed the time in preparing for war, in refining her plan to conquer the king her husband and seize the reins of power. In stark contrast, Louise Élisabeth, utterly insensible to the grand destiny supposedly awaiting her, is a catastrophe incarnate. A raging catastrophe.

To satisfy the demands of the Spanish sovereigns, her parents-in-law, the pauses in her journey are continually abbreviated. The stages get longer and longer. The royal honor guard capers about. The troops in the Prince de Rohan-Soubise’s little army do not cease to cut a fine figure. The prince himself is magnificent. He and his dashing cavaliers take delight in their speed and in the fine Graves and Sauterne wines. But for her, for Mlle de Montpensier, who has become the Princess of Asturias and will later be the queen of Spain, for this totally bewildered twelve-year-old girl whose family has rid itself of her as of an unloved stranger, the headlong journey is an ordeal.

Dashing isn’t her style, and now, after so many grueling days, she feels frankly awful. She’s been extracted from the general malaise she’s accustomed to — the hatred that binds her parents, the unique personality disorder for which each of her sisters is remarkable, the odious boy who is her brother, the scenes of drunkenness, gluttony, and lechery that form the kaleidoscope of her short memory — her natural atmosphere, in other words. And instead of feeling
better, she’s lost. In Bordeaux she isn’t allowed to go outdoors because of the risk of smallpox. In Bazas, where she’s just arrived, she’s the one who doesn’t feel like going out. The vineyards have been succeeded by the Landes forest, a sort of wilderness into which no one ventures lightheartedly. Moreover, she’s about to fall ill. She’s ill already. She suffers from earache, she has difficulty swallowing. She shivers as she tries to write a note to her father. With an effort, she forms big, ugly letters that resemble a series of more or less crooked sticks:

Louise Élisabeth’s fingers are covered with ink; she wipes them on her dress and rings for someone to change her. She’s made some lucky escapes, no doubt about that. In Chinay, the house she was staying in caught fire, and she was barely rescued in time. The next day, in Brioux, it was her wardrobe that went up in flames. And then, while traversing a forest, the troops of her cortege turned out to have been infiltrated by members of Cartouche’s army. A band of brigands made off with a quantity of silver plate and three trunks filled with rich gifts for the Spanish. The girl
wonders how many more inconveniences are in store for her. She’s already had some intuition of one inconvenience — and a horrid inconvenience at that, she says to herself, swallowing painfully — namely the face and form of Don Luis. Aagh! Aagh! Is she going to have to lie down naked next to him and let herself be touched? Is he going to be equally naked next to her? And suddenly the expression
nu comme un ver
, naked as a worm, crosses her mind and fills her with revulsion.