The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down (9 page)

There were four basic types of seat at court and you had to know precisely when and if you were allowed to occupy them, and
in whose presence. Except when no member of the direct royal family was present, only the king and queen were permitted to
sit in armchairs. When Louis sat Mme de Maintenon in an armchair in the presence of his grandchildren, it was a clear signal
that, as many had suspected, he had finally married her (in such secrecy that, to this day, the date of the marriage is uncertain).
Grandchildren of France (that is, those of the king and Monsieur) were also allowed the armchair if no one of higher rank,
including their own parents, was present.

Next in prestige below the armchair was the straight-backed, armless chair, which was permitted to princes and princesses
of the blood, cardinals, duchesses, foreign princes, and consorts of Spanish grandees, but only in the presence of grandchildren
of France or their inferiors. When Monsieur asked his brother to allow Madame to occupy a chair in the presence of the queen,
the king refused point-blank, explaining, "I did not think I should ever allow anything that would bring him too close [in
rank] to me."

Next came the
tabouret,
a low stool with fixed legs. Dukes, foreign princes, Spanish grandees, and noblewomen took the
tabouret
in the presence of grandchildren of France, but lesser nobles had to stand. In the presence of the dauphin (the crown prince)
and his wife, and of the children of France (the sons and daughters of the king and Monsieur), the grandchildren of France,
princesses of the blood, cardinals, duchesses, foreign princesses, and the consorts of Spanish grandees took the
ta­bouret,
while all others stood. In the presence of the king and queen, only the dauphin, dauphine, children and grandchildren of France,
princesses of the blood, duchesses, foreign princesses, and consorts of Spanish grandees could take the
tabouret.
Cardinals, too, were permitted the
tabouret,
but only if the king were absent. All others stood. In other circumstances, courtiers were also allowed to sit on
ployants
(folding stools) and
placets
(cush­ions) on the floor.

By far the most contentious of these seats was the
tabouret
Mme de Sévigné calls it the "sacred
tabouret
" - because the categories assigned to it were somewhat fluid. One could never
become
the sovereign or his direct descendant, but one could be
made
a duchess. To "take the
tabouret
7
meant to assume one's rank at court, like Balzac's heroine:

The duchesse de Langeais, a Navarreine by birth, came of a ducal house which had made a point of never marrying below its
rank since the reign of Louis XIV. Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a
tabouret.

The other wonderful thing about a
tabouret
was that one could earn it. One of the many perks of being the king's lover was the very real opportunity of being offered
a
tabouret
when he had finished with you. Since, with the unique exception of Mme de Maintenon, it was a near certainty that he
would
finish with you sooner or later, it may well be that the
tabouret,
which would last a lifetime, was anticipated not as a consolation prize but as the ultimate goal of the transaction. Consider
one lucky castoff, Mme de Fontanges:

Mme de Fontanges is a duchess with an income of 20,000 ecus; today she was receiving compliments on her day-bed. The King
went there openly. She takes her official stool tomorrow and then goes to spend Easter in an abbey the King has presented
to one of her sisters. This is a kind of separation that will pay homage to his confessor's severity. Some people say that
this establishment smacks of dismissal. I don't really believe it, but time will show.

Time did show - it was a dismissal.

The downside to the
tabourets
accessibility was that it was possible to believe that one was entitled to it when one was not. In 1704, the duke of Mantua
surrendered his duchy to Louis rather than have it ravaged in the course of the Italian war. Louis reciprocated by inviting
the duke to Versailles, where he was received with the highest honors of a foreign prince. These included being called "cousin"
by the king, being allowed to drive his carriage into the great courtyards of the Louvre and Versailles, and even being presented
to the duchesse de Bourgogne in her
ruelle.
When he died shortly thereafter, his widow retired to a convent but soon bored of it and made the decision to present herself
at court. Since she was a Lorraine and drew a court pension, and since her mother was close to Mme de Maintenon, and since
her late husband had done Louis a considerable service, she had good reason to anticipate a royal reception.

She arrived . . . with every intention of adopting rank equal to that of a Granddaughter of France, that is to say offering
her hand and an armchair to no one, no matter who they were [save King and Queen], and not accompanying visitors one step
towards the door.

The first sign that her ambitions were misplaced emerged during a visit to the widow of the Marechal de Bellefonds. She was
"so dumbfounded to find herself offered only a
ployant
that she sat down; but when her senses returned somewhat later, she left and never again set foot inside the door." Residing
at the chateau de Vincennes, she soon found herself twiddling her thumbs for lack of titled callers. It turns out, as only
the duchess of Mantua was unaware, that Mme de Maintenon was in a "disobliging mood" and that the king, rankled by the intrigues
of the Lorraines, "had no wish to give the Duchess any special place at court." He ordered that she present herself at Versailles
in morning dress, thereby making it impossible for her to attend any function at which full court dress was required. This
proved to be a fatal snub to her pretensions.

The indignities, every one a matter of seating, piled up fast and furious. At Versailles, the king refused to kiss her and
remained standing (thus preventing her from taking a seat of any kind), as did the king's grandsons. Within fifteen minutes,
she was dismissed and sent back to Vincennes, where she continued to be visited by no one.

Mme d'Elbeuf [her mother], who was not so easily discouraged, next tried to obtain for her a chair with a back in Mme la Duchesse
de Bourgogne's drawing-room. Now the wives and daughters of reigning princes, whose ministers are recognized by all the courts
of Europe, were traditionally offered chairs with backs at the late queen's receptions, but for the first visit only; thenceforward
they had only
tabourets
like any one else, and no different from the French duchesses. The Duchess of Mecklenburg was granted this privilege, but
the Duchess of Mantua was not, although her mother asked for it on four separate occasions.

Rather than accept a
tabouret,
which she considered beneath her dignity, the duchess of Mantua chose not to sit at all, and never returned to court. Instead,
she moved to Paris, where she expected her rank to be appreciated. Again she was wrong. She ran into trouble almost immediately
when she challenged the right of the prince and princesse de Montbazon's coach to precede hers through the second gate of
the Palais Royal. When neither side agreed to back down, a brawl erupted between the coachmen, M. de Montbazon threatening
to thrash anyone who touched his horses. Eventually, it was discovered that the two coaches might just squeeze through at
the same time, and bloodshed was averted, but the scandal did nothing to improve the duchess's prospects.

She soon came to see that haughtiness was getting her nowhere. She changed her tone, paying visits without waiting to receive
a first call, "driving like anyone else in a two-horse coach." She offered her armchairs freely and even conducted most ladies
as far as the door. Her newfound humility was a hit; the duchesse de Lauzun broke the ice with a first visit and society followed.
It was decidedly not court society, but it was better than nothing. She began to throw fashionable card parties, the ultimate
acknowledgment that her position was irreparable.

Her grandiose aspirations to royal rank melted away and all her schemes for being great at Court were succeeded by the ambition
to be a good hostess in Paris.

She might have convinced Saint-Simon of that, but she couldn't convince herself. She was dead within the year at age twenty-five,
presumably of a broken heart.

If the duchess of Mantua had agreed in 1709 to take a stool instead of insisting on a chair, all her social setbacks could
have been avoided. But she understood every bit as well as the king that there was far more at stake than sore knees and dusty
hems even at the cost of her own public humiliation, she was determined to uphold the order that had secured everything she
and her family possessed: wealth, rank, reputation, tradition, and continuity. As the king himself put it:

Those who think that ambitions of this kind are mere affairs of ceremonial are wholly deluded; there is nothing in these matters
which does not request careful thought or which is not capable of having serious consequences. The people whom we rule . .
. judge according to what they see on the outside, so that it is most usually by the place and rank that they measure their
respect and their obedience.

By refusing to sit down in the king's house, the duchess was not bucking the reigning ideology, but in fact acting out a cruel
obeisance to it.

Almost everyone did, from Vatel, the prince de Conde's chef, who stabbed himself through the heart rather than serve the king
an unworthy meal; to the due d'Antin, who, at his chateau PetitBourg, made a precise replica of Mme de Maintenon's rooms at
Saint Cyr, down to the very way her books were stacked on the table. Upon a visit from Louis XIV, d'Antin had an entire avenue
of chestnut trees silently uprooted overnight, as the king slept, rather than obstruct His Majesty's view at breakfast. You
do what you have to do. Or, at least, most of us do.

But there is always the rare individual who just has to dissent, regardless of all the seductive inducements to conformity.
They just can't help themselves, the impulse to self-assertion is too strong. They just have to wet the bed, so to speak.
In Louis XIV's Versailles, self-assertion meant, at great peril, refusing the king's hospitality. Not many had the guts or
the imagination for it, but there was one. Not only did this man manage to slip the shackles of the king's hospitality; he
also actually managed to raise, from the depths of a perverse and tormented imagination, an alternate universe in which he
stood the entire concept of hospitality as ideology on its head and, ultimately, made it work to his own advantage. He didn't
really want it this way; if you had asked him, he probably would have claimed to prefer a life of ease and privilege. He just
couldn't help himself. With Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, more so than with most, character really was destiny.

The portraits of Bussy reveal a dashing cavalier straight out of central casting for
The Three Musketeers,
with his roguish moustache, voluminous wig and gleaming armor, flouncy collar, and wicked smile. In fact, he was all that
and more, everything you might expect from such an archetype: a womanizer and adulterer, a willful malingerer, a sardonic
wit, inconstant in love and allegiance, a boisterous carouser who usually let his high spirits lead him into indiscretion.
He was also a fine writer with a keen eye for telling detail and social power relationships. He was lucky enough to have been
born into precisely the wrong century, the one time and place where all his charms and weaknesses were sure to set him apart
to his advantage and great peril. A century earlier and he would have been just another swashbuckler in Henri IV's court of
scoundrels; a century later and he probably would have ended up sharing a cell with the marquis de Sade.

He was born in 1618, the third son of a Burgundian nobleman of ancient lineage, and extremely well educated by the Jesuits.
His father sent him off to war under Turenne at the age of sixteen, where he shamelessly deserted his first command, though
his youth saved him from any unpleasant repercussions. Almost from the onset, plagued by a lack of money to buy a commission,
he began writing poetry to make his reputation in society. In 1638, his father transferred his own colonel's commission to
him and Louis XIII gave him twelve thousand livres to buy recruits, which he promptly lost. He was a typical young officer,
fighting bravely in the summer, loving too well in the off-season, dueling and brawling over women, one of whom, to his distress,
turned out to be a beautiful hermaphrodite. His first stay in the Bastille, a mere five months, came in 1641, when he abandoned
his troops to pursue a lover and his leaderless men went on a rampage of rape and pillage in the village of Moulins. Bussy
quit the service.

Despite his clear avowal that "I despise marriage because I am the enemy of all constraint," he went on to marry his wealthy
cousin Gabrielle de Toulongeon in 1643 and embarked on his first extramarital affair two years later. Racked with guilt, he
stayed at home and moped as the French army went on to a glorious victory at Nordlingen in Flanders. In 1645, having outlived
all five of his brothers, he inherited the title of comte de Bussy and went on to fight well with the due d'Enghien (the future
prince de Conde) in Catalonia, but he abandoned him after the defeat of Lerida. In 1648, he misguidedly kidnapped a rich widow
whom he was convinced wanted desperately to be ravished.

He fought with Conde during the Fronde, participating in the siege of Paris, where he was taken prisoner for six hours. When
Conde turned against Louis XTV, Bussy's allegiance to the sovereign caused a vague irritation to his conscience. He briefly
considered switching sides but soon came to see that his only chance of getting paid was to stick with the prince, who eventually
gave him only half of what he thought he was owed. Enough was enough: like his fellow
Frondeur
Cyrano de Bergerac, he went over to the king.