Paris: The Novel (90 page)

It was totalitarian. It was comprehensive. A century before, the Massacre
of Saint Bartholomew’s Day had been a horror. But the machinery of Louis XIV’s centralizing state was far more thorough. The Protestants were smashed. Large numbers, having no other option, converted to Catholicism. Perhaps a million converted in this way.

And yet, miraculously, hundreds of thousands managed to leave. Taking quiet roads, walking through woods, hiding in wagons and barges, hundreds of thousands of them managed to slip over the borders into the Netherlands, Switzerland or Germany. Others got out through Huguenot ports before the king could block them. They ran huge risks in doing so, and they had to be careful. But for all his power and all his troops, the Sun King could not stop them. France was too big, the Huguenots too many. Like the mass migration of Puritans from England to America, fifty years before, about two percent of the population, including some of the most skilled, were lost to their country, and gained by others.

The Renard family, by acting swiftly, had shown much wisdom. Without a word to their friends and neighbors, they discreetly vanished. A month later, they arrived in London, where the existing Huguenot community soon grew to many times its size.

A week after the Edict of Fontainebleau, Perceval d’Artagnan called Amélie to him for a talk.

“My child,” he announced, “I have good news for you. A great opportunity has arisen—one that may change your life entirely.” Madame de Saint-Loubert, a distant kinswoman of the family, well connected at court, had recently written to him, he explained, to let him know of a position that might be of interest. He had written back. “And now it’s all arranged.” He smiled. “You’re to go to Versailles.”

“To Versailles, Papa?” Amélie looked astonished. “I thought you hated the court.”

She was right, of course. During the last twenty years, d’Artagnan had watched the Sun King’s grip on France get tighter and tighter. If Cardinal Richelieu had been the mentor of Cardinal Mazarin, Mazarin in turn had left the king with a trained successor, the superintendent of finances, Colbert. For twenty years Colbert had built up a bureaucracy of plain men who quietly took more and more of the administration of France into their hands.

As long as the court remained in Paris, the process hadn’t been too
noticeable. The king had made improvements to the Louvre, and started building the splendid hospital of Les Invalides for army veterans. That was welcome. Social life had continued as usual. The aristocrats had their mansions. Corneille, Molière and Racine had filled the theaters. And if bureaucrats increasingly attended to the tiresome business of running the government, the aristocrats still provided the army officers. Theirs was the honor of battle. They could fight and die for their king, in the old-fashioned way, pride themselves on their valor, win glory like the heroes of feudal times and look down upon the bureaucrats and merchant classes alike.

Until the court moved to Versailles. It had happened only three years ago, but the transformation had been complete. Anyone who wanted office and preferment now had to abandon Paris and live under the king’s supervision there. Even valiant soldiers, having campaigned in the summer—for war, thank God, was still an affair of gentlemen, to be conducted in the summer season—still needed to spend the winter in lodgings in Versailles so that they could catch the eye of the king and get a command the following year. And they had to hang about there all the time. They could visit their estates when necessary, but if they slipped off to Paris for a week without permission, the king would notice and their chance of a command would be gone. D’Artagnan disliked the king and his methods, but he could see his cunning. Louis now had everyone under his thumb.

“It’s true that I don’t like Versailles,” he confessed to Amélie, “and I don’t want to go there myself. But it’s still a wonderful opportunity for you. The position that’s on offer is beyond anything we might have hoped for. You’ll be one of the maids of honor to the dauphine, the daughter-in-law of the king himself.” He smiled kindly. “And I think the change of scene will do you good.”

The matter was decided in any case. Three days later, Amélie found herself on her way to the court at Versailles.

As Roland de Cygne looked at the letter, he knew that he must answer it. But he didn’t want to.

It was some months since he had communicated the sad news of his wife’s death to his cousin Guy in Canada. It was the first time he’d written to him in years.

In the early part of the century, his grandfather had corresponded
with his brother Alain regularly. They were devoted to each other, and the three thousand miles of ocean that lay between them could not alter that. For a long time Robert had hoped that his younger brother would cover himself in glory in Canada, achieve a great position and the wealth that came with it and return to France to found a second branch of the family. This dream perhaps never died until the day that Robert himself departed.

But things hadn’t worked out that way. Not that Alain had done badly. He’d received some quite substantial land grants. But they required his attention if they were going to be worth anything. In due course he’d asked his brother to find him a wife of noble family, but who would not mind sharing the hardships of the frontier. That had not been easy. It had been quite impossible to find a girl with any fortune. But in the end Robert had found the youngest daughter of an impoverished nobleman who was reduced to a state hardly better than a small farmer, and she had been willing to take on the nobleman with his tract in the wilderness. After her arrival in Canada, Alain had written back that his brother had made an excellent choice, and that they were very happy together.

The next generation had continued the correspondence. Roland remembered his grandfather speaking of his Canadian cousins as if this was a part of his family that he would surely meet one day. And after his grandfather had died, his father Charles had kept the connection alive, out of family duty. Roland and his second cousin, Guy, sent letters to each other from time to time, especially concerning any important family event.

Guy de Cygne in Canada, therefore, had known that Roland and his wife had only one daughter who lived to adulthood and that she was long since married to a noble in Brittany. He had known that her two sons had both died as infants, that Roland was now fifty-five years of age and that he was a widower. It could hardly be thought that he was likely to marry again and start a fresh family.

Though Guy de Cygne was aware that his cousin in France had once been wounded in battle, he had no knowledge of the details of the wound, and so he was unaware that Roland’s nose had been split and that his face was quite unsightly, making it even less likely that he would obtain another wife at this late stage of his life.

All he knew for certain was that as things stood at present, upon the
death of Roland, his own son Alain would be the only male de Cygne left, and presumably heir to the family estate.

The letter before Roland now came not from Guy, but from his son Alain, a young man of twenty, containing the sad news of Guy’s demise, and asking Roland de Cygne whether he wished him to come to France.

It was a fair question. If the young man was to be the representative of the family in France, then he would have much to learn, and Roland should summon him to his side at once.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. A deep, primitive voice inside him urged him to fight. He would not give in. I may not be much to look at, he thought, but I still have my name, and my health. I have another ten years. More than that, perhaps.

Madame de Saint-Loubert was a middle-aged woman with a long face and very large blue eyes. Her mother and d’Artagnan’s mother had been cousins. Her husband, the count, had a modest position as a superintendent of mines, but hoped for more, and to help him accomplish this, she had made friends with a large number of people at court. They had a small house in the town, where Amélie spent her first night. The very next morning, Madame de Saint-Loubert announced that she was taking Amélie to court.

“You are not due to see the dauphine until tomorrow. You needn’t worry, by the way. I happen to know that you are the only person under consideration at the moment, so you only have to be polite and the position will be yours. But it will be a good idea for you to get an idea of the court before you meet her. So just stand beside me and watch.”

It took hours to dress. Amélie’s gown was charming. An underpetticoat of watered satin trimmed with bands of silk. A hooped skirt gathered at the waist, divided, looped at the sides and then flowed back to end in a short train behind her. It was made of a heavy silk, but with a light brown color, shot with pink, that suited her very well. Her tight bodice was decorated with charming ribbons tied in bows. French lace at her wrists and neck. It was the most feminine thing imaginable. Madame de Saint-Loubert’s hairdresser spent another two hours on her hair, arranging it with ringlets and ribbons in the style then current. She was relieved that her dress passed muster. “It’s better than many of the ladies of the
court. Not everyone here is rich, you know. You look very well. Come along.”

The first thing that surprised Amélie as they approached the vast palace was how many people seemed to be crowding around the entrance. “Who are they?” she asked.

“Anyone who wants to look at the king.”

“Anybody can walk into the palace?”

“Yes. And they do.”

Just then a closed sedan chair was carried in past them.

“Who is that?” Amélie asked.

“Hard to know. All the sedan chairs are hired. Only the royal family are allowed to have their own.”

They went up the great staircase and came into the huge Galerie des Glaces. It was crowded with people, from aristocrats to tradesmen. “We’ll stay back a little,” said her guide. “We aren’t trying to catch the king’s eye—which most of the people here are. I just want you to observe.”

They waited awhile. Amélie gazed around. The vast mirrored hall stretched so far that, with all the people there, she could not even see the ends of it, but only the long succession of crystal chandeliers hanging from the painted ceiling high above.

And then suddenly a silence swept along the huge hall. Footmen were approaching and other court officials. The great throng miraculously parted, like the Red Sea, withdrawing to the sides and leaving a broad path down the center.

Down which, a moment later, came the royal entourage.

“The king goes to Mass at exactly this hour every day,” Madame de Saint-Loubert whispered. “You can set the clock by his movements.”

The king came first. He was certainly an impressive figure. Wearing a large black wig and magnificently embroidered coat he moved down the gallery at a swift but stately pace. His face was aquiline, the nose a little hooked, his eyes half closed. But Amélie had the good sense to realize that under their half-closed lids his eyes were observing everything. She also noticed something else. The king’s height owed something to the high heels of his shoes. She whispered this to Madame de Saint-Loubert.