The Cat and the King (2 page)

Mother probably felt guilty about not caring more for me, which may have been one of the reasons that she labored so long and carefully in arranging a proper match. She made lists of eligible young ladies, their dowries and other assets, and was always careful to note any liabilities, such as bodily defects, bad temper or inherited insanity. When the eldest Mademoiselle de Lorges was in question, she was sufficiently enthusiastic to do enough research to rebut one presumption against her.

“The maréchale de Lorges doesn't like Gabrielle!” she exclaimed to me. “Doesn't like her own daughter! Apparently she has a passion for the younger sister. I suppose Gabrielle doesn't flatter her, the way the little one undoubtedly does. More to her credit, if so. They say Gabrielle has a good head on her shoulders, which ought to be a help to you at court. Of course, you never can tell what may happen to their characters once they're free of the convent, but at least she
seems
sensible.”

I had a bit the feeling that Mother was looking for a responsible person to whom she could hand me over, in exchange, so to speak, for what the lawyers call a “receipt and release.” The donor of the bridegroom would be discharged of liability when her account had been rendered. Was there not some mild contempt for our sex implied in such an attitude? Let them go, these silly men, about their silly ways, with their big hats and plumes and wigs, their bowing and scraping and their idiotic wars, and leave the “real” world to the wives and mothers! Except this particular mother was going to retire as a parent. It was high time, she evidently believed, that she should have a little fun. A woman owed herself something, after all.

Mother handled the negotiations with the due and duchesse de Lorges herself, but she kept me abreast of them, reviewing the figures of the dowry discussions with me every night after her meeting with my hard-bargaining future in-laws. I was anxious to see my bride, and it was arranged that she should be sent back from the convent for a visit to her parents at their hôtel in Versailles.

I was at once delighted with Gabrielle's appearance and manner. She was a touch taller than I, but that I knew I had to expect in any fine young woman, and I was determined not to marry a girl shorter than myself and perhaps sire a race of dwarfs, like the Condés. She was very pale, with perfect, regular features and raven-black hair. She spoke little and modestly. I was more than satisfied.

As I was leaving the house, however, Mademoiselle de Lorges' governess followed me out and asked me in a hurried whisper if I would step into the grounds by a side door. Astonished, I nonetheless complied and found myself in a small rose garden, again facing my bride-to-be. She seemed stiff and tense, but somehow not afraid. The governess moved discreetly out of earshot.

“You will think me very bold, sir, and no doubt I am, but circumstances force me. I made up my mind this morning that I would appeal to you alone if I should decide at our meeting that you were a good man. I know that I am young and have had no experience with men, but I still think I can tell a good man.”

“If you can tell that, Mademoiselle, you should be a great force at court. They know how to hide their goodness there!”

“Pray don't laugh at me, sir. The matter I must broach to you is much too serious. It is life and death to me.”

I saw now, staring into those steady green-gray eyes, that this was not a girl to play flirting games with. I conformed my countenance to hers.

“Tell me what the matter is, Mademoiselle.”

“My mother wishes me to take the veil. She wants to add my dowry to my sister's. She hopes, with the doubled amount, that my sister may make the greatest match in France.”

I could not help wondering, even at such a moment, what Madame de Lorges might consider that to be. “A prince of the blood? Would she fly so high?”

Mademoiselle de Lorges seemed at first faintly surprised at my question. Then she shrugged. “I don't know what her imagination aspires to. But she has always preferred my sister. She has never cared for me. I don't mind that. But she should not thrust me into a convent!”

“You have no vocation?”

“None whatever. It would be torment. A living death.”

“But, my dear young lady, she cannot force you! Your father would never allow it.”

“You do not know my mother. She is quite relentless in getting what she wants. She would make my life unbearable. She would keep me from marrying by haggling over the dowry or hinting that I had some defect that might keep me from bearing children. My father is good to me, but he cares about peace in his household. He would not hold out against her.”

“But if he knew you had no vocation! If you told him what you have just told me!”

“My mother would persuade him that I was simply hysterical. I have an aunt who is the abbess of the convent where she wishes to send me. I have heard Mother tell my father what a pleasant life it would be. ‘So safe and comfortable!' she exclaims. ‘With such good food and such dear, gentle friends. And one is always somebody when one is the abbess's niece. Oh, believe me, Gabrielle will do very well there. I sometimes wonder if
I
should not have been happier in a convent!'”

As Gabrielle imitated her mother's tone, I fancied that I was hearing Madame de Lorges herself. It was a perfect rendition of a worldly woman's hypocritical yearning for the cloister. Yet I wonder if even then it did not occur to me that a girl who could so perfectly ape her formidable parent might have a will that even such a parent could not have broken.

“Tell me what I can do,” I said simply.

“Take me with the smaller dowry that my father is offering! I promise you that you will never regret it. A good wife can be a help at court. I have heard that from people who must know. I am sure that I can learn how it is done. And I shall place your career before anyone and anything. Please, sir. Try me!”

There was something in her tone that brought instant conviction. Then and there I made the most important decision of my life.

“I should be proud to take you, Mademoiselle, with no dowry at all!”

Her eyes shot me a little golden gleam of gratitude, and she clasped her hands in a gesture of thanks. “Thank you, sir. From my heart. But you will not be so tried. There will be a dowry.”

I had a hard time with Mother over its amount. She insisted that the Lorges were bluffing, and I dared not tell her about the scene in the rose garden for fear that she would consider the girl too brash and bold, qualities that are quickly deplored by strong-minded women when they find them in their juniors. So I simply told her that I had fallen hopelessly in love at first sight, which was in part the truth. As this was perfectly consistent with Mother's conception of the giddiness and inconsequence of men, particularly in her own family, she decided to accept it. It might, after all, have proved too difficult to plant my affections in new territory if she had had first to uproot them in old. She had a private conversation with Gabrielle, the gist of which was never revealed to me, and then, quite abruptly, agreed to the lesser dowry. My marriage contract was signed by the king and by half the royal family, and my real life began.

I
T WAS
the greatest fun, introducing Gabrielle to court life and watching the glitter of the huge palace with its silver furniture and thousands of gaudy occupants reflected in the dark eyes of this soberly observing girl, who had hardly known anything previously beyond the walls and gardens of her convent. She took in everything; I had only to tell her any fact once. I could not make out at first whether this was because Versailles had made so deep an impression upon her or simply because she was intelligent. It was probably both. She was certainly never blinded by the glittering spectacle of the court. She learned etiquette as one might learn a trade.

I was up early to attend the king's lever, and Gabrielle would join me in the great gallery as he passed through on his way to mass. We made our calls on those who had apartments in the palace in the morning, sometimes separately and sometimes together. I would attend the king's dinner at one, where he ate alone at table, and in the afternoon Gabrielle would return to our little house while I followed the royal hunt, unless we both joined the king's promenade in the gardens. In the evenings there were always receptions, with card games or dancing, and we both attended the king's supper, where he sat flanked by members of the royal family. Then Gabrielle would go home, and I usually stayed for the coucher.

Our day was really a kind of celebration of the natural functions of our magnificent sexagenarian monarch: his waking, his washing, his eating, his exercising, his retiring, even his defecating. It was no coincidence that the far-flung alleys and drives around the château were all centered, in one huge geometrical design, on the royal bedroom, even the royal bed, the source of our kings. We had become so accustomed to a monarch who took so utterly for granted that his every act should be a public ceremony and who never altered the perfect regularity of his habits, that we were surprised to learn of kings in other courts who were sometimes bored or fatigued and who created distant retreats for their private pleasures.

Gabrielle was impressed with the king's endurance.

“He must have the strength of an ox,” she observed to me.

“Easily. And it helps him to have been king so long.”

“Can he even remember a time when he wasn't?”

“Oh, I think so. His memory is perfect, and he was at least four when Louis XIII died. His father is said to have asked him what his name was, and he replied: ‘Louis XIV.' ‘Not quite yet,' the dying man is supposed to have murmured.”

“I'm sure it happened,” Gabrielle half-whispered, curtseying deeply as the great perruque and the large aquiline nose appeared in the doorway at the end of the gallery.

She learned the thirty-four duke-peers and their order of precedence. She learned the false claims of the Rochefoucaulds to be numbered thirteenth, ahead of the Saint-Simons. She learned who was entitled to an armchair and who to a tabouret, or stool, in the presence of a son of France, and how long a train a duchess wore in mourning a prince of the blood. She learned who was entitled to drive into the Cour du Marbre and who had to descend at the main gate; what gentlemen could remain covered in the king's presence, and for whom both wings of a double door had to be flung open. She learned that the dauphin was always referred to simply as “Monseigneur,” and the king's brother, the due d'Orléans, as “Monsieur.” She learned that Madame de Maintenon ranked in court only as a marquise, but that in her own apartments she was treated like a queen. And, above all, she learned about the bastards.

“There are five of these who have been ‘legitimated,'” I instructed her, making no effort to control the natural disdain of my tone. “There is the king's daughter by Vallière, who is now the dowager princesse de Conti. Then there are the four by Madame de Montespan: the duchesse de Bourbon, who is known as ‘Madame la Duchesse,' and her unmarried sister, Mademoiselle de Blois. And two sons: the duc du Maine and the comte de Toulouse.”

Gabrielle pondered this a moment. “But if they've been legitimated, should you still call them bastards?”

“The king can make a bastard. Only God can unmake one.”

We were standing at the far side of the
parterre d'eau.
Looking east now we could see the whole great shimmering yellow-white façade of the seemingly infinite palace. “You would think that the man who could build all that...!” She paused.

“Could do anything he wants?” I finished for her. “That's precisely what it's designed to make you think.”

“And was it unlawful for the king to make Maine a duke?”

“No,” I replied, wincing at this. “That, alas, was within his power. He can make anyone a peer. But what
was
unlawful was his placing Maine and Toulouse ahead of the other peers. He could not properly alter the precedence.”

“But if he could make his sons peers, could he not have made them princes of the blood? And wouldn't
that
have put them lawfully ahead of you?”

“The only way the king can make a prince of the blood is in bed with his lawful spouse. A prince of the blood is a very carefully defined person. He must be a descendant, in a direct male line, from Hugues Capet, who reigned seven hundred years ago.”

“Let me see if I can name them,” said my good little student, holding up a hand to count fingers. “They are the king himself, of course, and his son and three grandsons, his brother and nephew...”

“To be exact, those are not princes of the blood,” I corrected her. “The dauphin and his children are sons of France. And ‘Monsieur,' the king's brother, due d'Orléans, as a child of Louis XIII, is, of course, also a son of France. Chartres,
his
son, ranks as a grandson of France. The princes of the blood today are the Bourbon-Condés and the Bourbon-Contis, but they have to go all the way back to Saint Louis in the male line to find their first royal ancestor!” I was now almost solemn, as befitted the gravity of the topic.

“But suppose they were all to die out? Sons and grandsons of France and princes of the blood?”

“Then the peers, after seeking divine guidance, would select another first family. I presume they would start with the Uzès, who are the premier dukes.”

“But wouldn't even a ‘legitimated' bastard of the king, in such an emergency, have a better claim than some completely unrelated duke?”

Scandalized by this idea, I was about to reprove her, when I reminded myself that she was simply trying to learn. I was silent for a few moments until I had regained my calm. “In a Christian society,” I told her, as we now walked slowly on, “we must be regulated by the sacraments. The king is our master, but no more so than God is his. He must be subject to the divine constitution. If he is to be free to promote his illicit seed to the throne, we have no more dignity than did the slaves of Attila. There have to be things a man will stand up for and die for, or life is not worth living.”