Paris: The Novel (67 page)

If the lunch at the Blanchards’ apartment had been marred by the unpleasantness concerning Dreyfus, there would be no sign of that today. Roland had felt ill at ease on the boulevard Malesherbes, but at Versailles he felt he was on his own turf. And he did the thing in style.

Indeed, he rather enjoyed the situation. It was pleasant to be able to show his guests that he could arrange a private tour like this. Moreover, his family had been at the court of Versailles in its heyday, and passed down plenty of anecdotes with which he could amuse and impress his guests. He was determined to be charming.

He met them at the station with a large carriage that would hold them all—Marie, her brother Marc, Hadley the American, and Fox the English lawyer. This was just the right amount of company to give him the chance to observe Marie carefully, without it being too obvious.

After all, he reminded himself, that was the point of the exercise: to find out whether Marie might be a possible wife. With a little luck, he’d be able to discover that by the end of the afternoon.

It did not occur to him that he had competition.

He noticed one thing straightaway, before they even reached the entrance to the palace: He liked the way she sat and walked. She had a perfect upright posture. Roland didn’t like women who stooped.

He’d always supposed that his wife would be elegant. Marie might not be elegant in the way of the slim, fashionable women one saw in Paris drawing rooms, but she was undeniably pretty. She was also one of those fortunate women who would get even more attractive with age. He could see her in middle age, and beyond, far more attractive than some of today’s elegant women would look by then. In old age, her posture would ensure that she was always dignified. So he might be giving up a little elegance with Marie, but he’d get something even better in return.

Before entering the château, they surveyed the vast courtyards around which the palace was spread. With its huge extended center and wings, Versailles was certainly breathtaking in its scale.

“I have visited this palace since I was a little boy,” he remarked to Marie, “yet even now I confess that it takes my breath away.” He glanced at Hadley, who had never seen the place before, and wondered what the best introduction would be. But the American made that easy by laughing pleasantly and remarking:

“Call me provincial, but I still haven’t gotten used to the size of your great houses. All this,” he spread his arms, “just for Louis XIV and his family?”

“Ah, my friend,” Roland responded, “you would be right. And it started, you know, as quite a modest hunting lodge. But this huge assembly you see here was built not just for a family, but for the entire court. The royal family had apartments within the palace, but from around 1680 until the French Revolution—over a century—Versailles was the administrative capital of France. All kinds of people had to be lodged here: the administrators, the most powerful nobles, anyone who had business with the king. When foreign ambassadors arrived, Versailles impressed them with the might of France. The king insisted that almost everything in it was of French manufacture, like the Gobelins tapestries and Aubusson carpets he promoted—so it was like a sort of permanent trade exhibition. It was quite practical.”

Now Marie gently joined the conversation.

“I have heard,” she said to Hadley, “that one can still see the original hunting lodge within the palace building.” She turned to Roland. “Is that true, Monsieur de Cygne?”

Roland smiled to himself. He suspected that Marie knew the answer to her own question perfectly well, but that as he was acting as guide, she was being careful not to intrude upon his territory.

“You are exactly right, mademoiselle,” he said. “The very center of this huge facade contains the original hunting lodge. Just a modest house with a few bedrooms. But they preserved it and then built outward in every direction.” He turned to them all. “Shall we go in?”

As they started to move toward the entrance, he heard Marc murmur to his sister, “You knew where the hunting lodge was. Why didn’t you just say?” But Marie ignored him.

So Roland had been right. He remembered a conversation with Father Xavier, years ago. “When you marry,” the priest had said, “before you take any action, think first how it will feel to your wife. Consider her feelings before your own. If you and your wife both do this for each other, you are on the road to a happy marriage.”

Roland wanted a marriage like his parents’. He wanted to love and be loved. “I will try to do as you say,” he’d answered the priest.

“I am glad to hear it,” Father Xavier had replied with a smile. “So let me add one word of caution. However much you may fall in love, do not waste that love on a woman who is not considerate in return.”

Marie’s act of good manners was only a small sign, but an encouraging one. It suggested that she was thoughtful about others.

As they approached the entrance, Hadley had another question.

“Why did he move from Paris?” he asked. “He had the Louvre Palace, which is big enough.”

“Some say he hated Paris,” said Marc.

“That may be so,” Roland said. “But he still built Les Invalides, and some of the first boulevards in the city. The truth is, nobody knows for certain. But I think it was part of a larger process. France had been brought together as a single country, but it was still very hard to govern, with great nobles controlling huge regions. In the time of his father, Louis XIII, the great Cardinal Richelieu tried to bring order to the land by making the monarchy absolute. When Louis XIV came to the throne, he was only five years old, but all through his childhood, Richelieu’s successor, Cardinal Mazarin, followed the same policy. And once Louis XIV took power, with the help of his finance minister, Colbert, he continued to centralize the administration of France. What better way to control the nobles than to have all the powerful ones in one place, where he could keep an eye on
them. Over two generations he became so clever at making them dance to his tune at the court of Versailles that he completely neutered them. He couldn’t have done that in Paris. It’s too spread out.”

“And hard to control,” Fox added.

“Impossible. Always full of places for people to hide, and breed dangerous ideas.” Roland smiled ruefully. “Paris gave us the Revolution.”

Now he turned to Marie. Partly it was politeness. Also a little test. “But what do you think, mademoiselle?” he asked.

Marie considered for a moment.

“Everything you say seems correct, monsieur,” she answered carefully, “yet I would add one thing.” She glanced at Hadley. “Monsieur Hadley may know that during the boyhood of the king, perhaps as a reaction to the autocratic policies of Cardinal Mazarin, there were two terrible revolts, known as the Fronde. One night, the Paris mob broke into the Louvre and came into the king’s bedchamber. He was still only a child. He pretended to be asleep while they came around his bed, inspecting him. Imagine the scene. It must have been terrifying. Nobody could have stopped them if they’d wanted to murder him. And I suspect, monsieur, that the memory of that night stayed with the king all his life. His head may have dictated the move to Versailles, but I believe that, in his heart, even as a grown man, Louis XIV never felt safe in the Louvre.”

Roland looked at her admiringly.

“I think your woman’s wisdom comes closer to the mark than all my calculations,” he said with respect. And though he did not say it aloud, he added to himself that it would be a lucky man who had her by his side.

At the entrance, a guardian let them in. After that, they had the place to themselves. No footfalls, no voices but their own disturbed the silence of the huge marble halls, the gilded chambers and endless galleries.

They went through the King’s Apartment, stately, somber and impressive.

“Each reception room is named after one of the classical gods,” Roland explained. “The throne room is for Apollo.”

“It’s curious, isn’t it,” Marc remarked, “how our Christian monarch showed such a taste for comparing himself to pagan gods. He wasn’t called the Sun King for nothing.”

Here and there, Roland pointed out paintings and decorations, all by French artists like Rigaud and Le Brun, as they moved through the stately sequence of high, cold rooms. The culmination was the War Salon, a temple of green and red marble, massively ornamented with gold, and dominated by a huge oval relief of the godlike Sun King, mounted on a horse that was trampling upon his enemies.

“Everything depended upon the king,” Roland remarked. “His control was complete. The ritual was endless.” He gave Fox and Hadley an amused look. “Everything that the English and the American political systems wanted to avoid.”

And with that he led them through the doorway into the most famous room in France.

The Galerie des Glaces, the Hall of Mirrors. Nearly eighty yards long. Great windows down one side, gilded mirrors opposite, a tunnel-arched ceiling from which the massive row of crystal chandeliers hung in galactic splendor. The almost endless polished expanse of parquet floor gleamed like a lake under the sun.

“This is where everyone waited for the king to pass on his way to chapel,” Roland remarked.

“I’ve read that the court etiquette was pretty stifling,” Hadley said.

“It was. But I think the women had the worst of it,” Roland told him. “Somehow a fashion evolved where the women were supposed to take tiny steps very quickly—you couldn’t see it of course, under their long dresses—so that it seemed as if they were floating.” He turned to Marie. “What would you say to that, mademoiselle?”

A mischievous glint came into Marie’s demure eyes.

“Do you mean like this, monsieur?”

And then, to the astonishment of the four watching men, she set off up the Hall of Mirrors. Her dress was long enough so that one could not see her feet. And the effect was astonishing. It was, indeed, as if she were floating away up the gallery. With the pale light coming in through the windows, her floating form passed like a ghost from mirror to mirror so that one could almost have imagined she were passing into some other age until, turning some hundred feet away, she glided back to them and to the present.

Finally, when she stopped the gentlemen burst into a little round of applause.

“Where did you learn that?” asked Marc in amazement.

“I had a dancing teacher who could do it. She showed me how.”

“Formidable!”
cried Roland enthusiastically. “More than that. Exquisite. You must have been at the court in another life.”

“A remarkable performance,” said Fox. “Wonderful.”

“It’s quite tiring,” said Marie with a laugh. “I’m glad I don’t have to do it every day.”

They moved into the Queen’s Apartment. Redecorated several times in the eighteenth century, these had a lighter air.

“Your family were at Versailles, Monsieur de Cygne?” Marie asked.

“Yes. In fact, it’s rather a romantic tale. Back in the days of Louis XIV, my family almost came to an end. There was just one de Cygne left. He was getting old, and he had no heir. But then, here at Versailles, he met a young woman, of the D’Artagnan family. And despite the great difference in age, they fell in love and married.”

“D’Artagnan like in
The Three Musketeers
?”

“Exactly so. Dumas used the name in his novel, but it was based on a real family.”

“And they were happy?”

“Very happy, I believe. They had a son.” He smiled. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“I think that’s charming,” said Marie.

As he guided them out of the Queen’s Apartment, Roland announced that he would show them the chapel, which lay across the courtyard. As they walked across the courtyard, Marie turned to him.

“I was interested by the story you just told us,” she said quietly. “I always supposed it would be very difficult to have a happy marriage when there is a great difference between the husband and wife.”

“A difference of age, you mean?”

“Of age. Or other things.”

A delicate question, he thought, but sensible. She was right to raise it. After all, he was an aristocrat, and she, though rich, was a woman of the bourgeoisie. Such a difference in traditional France was still huge.