The Short Reign of Pippin IV (11 page)

Clotilde's subsequent involvement in politics and religion was followed by her symbolic marriage to a white bull in the Bois de Boulogne. Her celebrated affairs of honor, in which she wounded three elderly Academicians and herself received a rapier thrust in the right buttock, caused some comment—and all this before she was twenty. In an article in
Souffrance,
she wrote that her career had left her no time for childhood.

She then reached the phase when she spent her afternoons at the movies and her evenings arguing the merits of Gregory Peck, Tab Hunter, Marlon Brando, and Frank Sinatra. Marilyn Monroe she found overbloomed and Lollobrigida bovine. She went to Rome, where she acted in three versions of
War and Peace
and two of
Quo Vadis,
but her notices threw her into such despair that her elevation to Princess Royale came just in time. In this field the competition was less fierce.

Clotilde began to think of herself, at least pronominally, in the plural. She referred to “our people,” “our position,” “our duty.” Her first royal act, that of turning on the fountains at Versailles, was followed by a detailed plan very dear to her heart and not without its parallel in history. She set apart an area quite near to Versailles, to be called “Le Petit Round-Up.” Here there would be small ranch houses, corrals, barns, bunkhouses. Here branding irons would be constantly in bonfires and cayuses would leap wild-eyed against the barriers. To Le Petit Round-Up would come Roy Rogers, Alan Ladd, Hoot Gibson, Gary Cooper, the taciturn and the strong. They would feel at home at Le Petit Round-Up. Clotilde, in leather skirt and black shirt, would move about, serving red-eye in shot-glasses. If there were gun-play—and how can this be avoided where passionate and inarticulate men gather?—then the princess would be ready to stanch wounds and cool with her royal hand the pain-wracked but silent sufferer. This was only one of Clotilde's plans for the future.

It was at this time that she began to take her old Teddy bear to bed. It was at this time that she fell madly in love with Tod Johnson.

Clotilde met him at Les Ambassadeurs, where she had gone with young Georges de Marine—the Comte de Marine, that is, who was seventeen and listless. Georges knew perfectly well that Clotilde knew Tab Hunter was in Paris. He knew also, because he belonged to the same fan club, that Tab Hunter would put in an appearance at Les Ambassadeurs sometime during the evening.

Tod Johnson sat next to Clotilde in the banquette seats which faced the dance floor. She noticed him with a quickened breath, watched him with blood-pounding interest, and finally, under the roaring of violins, she leaned toward him and asked, “You are American?”

“Sure.”

“Then you must be careful. They will keep opening champagne if you do not tell them to stop.”

“Thank you,” said Tod. “They already have. You are French?”

“Of course.”

“I didn't think any French people came here,” said Tod.

Georges kicked Clotilde viciously on the ankle, and her face reddened with pain.

Tod said, “I hope you don't mind. May I introduce myself? I am Tod Johnson.”

“I know how you do these things in America,” Clotilde said. “I have been to America. May I introduce the Comte de Marine? Now,” she said to Georges, “you must introduce me. That is how they do it.”

Georges squinted his eyes craftily. “Mademoiselle Clotilde Héristal,” he said evenly.

Tod said, “That name rings a bell. Are you an actress?”

Clotilde dropped her eyelashes. “No, Monsieur, except in so far as everyone is an actress.”

“That's good,” said Tod. “Your English is wonderful.”

Georges spoke without inflection in the tone he considered insulting. “Does Monsieur perhaps speak French?”

“Princeton French,” said Tod. “I can ask questions but I can't understand the answers. But I'm learning. It isn't all running together the way it did a few weeks ago.”

“You stay a while in Paris?”

“I don't have any plans. Would you permit me to order champagne?”

“If you will tell them to stop. You must not let them cheat you as though you were some Argentine.”

That is how it started.

 

 

Tod Johnson was the ideal American young man—tall, stiffhaired, blue-eyed, well dressed, well educated by going standards, well mannered, and soft-spoken. He was equally fortunate in his background. His father, H. W. Johnson, the Egg King of Petaluma, California, was reputed to have two hundred and thirty million white leghorn chickens. Even more fortunate was the fact that H. W. was a poor man who had built his chicken kingdom by his own efforts.

It will be seen that, although Tod Johnson was very rich, he did not suffer from lineage. At the end of his six months' shake-down in Europe he was expected to go home to Petaluma and begin at the bottom of the chicken business, eventually to rise to the top and take it over.

It was only after several meetings with Clotilde that he told her about his father and the egg empire. By then she was so warm and gooey with love that she forgot to tell him her own family news. Clotilde the novelist, the worldly, the Communist, the princess, had for the moment ceased to exist. At twenty she slopped into a fifteen-year-old love affair, all sighs and a full gassy feeling in the stomach. She was so vague and listless that Madame gave her an old country remedy that put her to bed in earnest and removed the necessity for a psychiatrist. Her body was so hard put to survive the remedy that her mind was left to take care of itself. When this happens the mind does very well. Her love remained, but she found she could breathe again.

 

 

19—was a monster year for American advertising. BBD & O was up to its ears rewriting the Constitution of the United States and at the same time marketing a new golf-mobile with pontoons.

Riker, Dunlap, Hodgson, and Fellows would have taken the French job in the fall, but could not pull its key people off promotion of Nudent, the dentrifice which grows teeth.

Merchison Associates was busy with a transatlantic pipeline, called in the public press “Tapal,” a twenty-four-inch main which ran under the sea from Saudi Arabia to New Jersey with floating pumping stations every fifty miles. The matter would not have been so difficult but for the constant meddling of Senator Banger, Democrat, New Mexico, with his nuisance questioning as to why army and navy personnel and material were being used by a privately owned corporation. Merchison Associates were in Washington most of the spring and summer. If any of these agencies had been free to function, the coronation of the King of France might have been run more smoothly.

Who could set down all the drama, the pageantry and glories, and, yes, the confusion of the coronation at Reims on July 15? Newspaper coverage ran to many millions of words. Color photographs filled the split-page of every newspaper with a circulation of more than twenty thousand.

The New York
Daily News
front page carried a headline, of which each letter was four inches high, that read: FROGS CROWN PIP.

Every byline writer and commentator in America was in attendance.

Conrad Hilton took this occasion to open the Versailles-Hilton.

The life story of every aristocrat in France was bought in advance.

Louelle Parsons had a front-page box headed: WILL CLOTILDE COME TO HOLLYWOOD?

The reader should consult back issues of newspapers for accounts of the great day at Reims and Paris—the cathedral crowded to the doors, the cries of the scalpers, the stands of ceramics, the miniatures of royal coaches, the crush of people in the square, the traffic jam on the road to Reims, unparalleled even at the finish of the Tour de France. One company made a small fortune selling miniature guillotines.

The coronation itself was a triumph of disorder. It was discovered at the last moment that horses had not been provided to draw the state coaches, but this lack was filled by the abattoirs of Paris, even though their gesture made certain sections of Paris meatless for three days. Miss France, representing Joan of Arc, stood beside the throne, banner in one hand and drawn sword in the other, until she fainted from heat and the weight of her armor. She crashed with the sound of falling kitchenware during the royal oath. However, six altarboys quickly propped her against a Gothic column, where she remained forgotten until late in the evening.

The Communists, acting purely from habit, painted “Go Home Napoleon” on the walls of the cathedral, but this slip both in history and in manners was taken by all with good humor.

The coronation was completed by eleven in the morning. Then the wave of spectators rushed back to Paris for the parade which was to move from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. This state procession was scheduled for two o'clock. It started at five.

The windows along the Champs Elysées were sold out. A place at the curb brought as much as five thousand francs. The owners of stepladders were able to extend their vacations in the country by a week or more.

The procession was artfully arranged to represent past and present. First came the state carriages of the Great Peers, decorated with gold leaf and tumbling angels; then a battery of heavy artillery drawn by tractors; then a company of crossbowmen in slashed doublets and plumed hats; then a regiment of dragoons with burnished breastplates; then a group of heavy tanks and weapon-carriers, followed by the Noble Youth in full armor. A battalion of paratroopers followed, armed with submachine guns, leading the king's ministers in their robes of office, and behind them a platoon of musketeers in lace, knee-breeches, silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes with great buckles. These last moved along regally, using their musket crutches as staffs.

At last the royal coach creaked by. Pippin IV, an uncomfortable bundle of purple velvet and ermine, with the queen, equally befurred, sitting beside him, acknowledged the cheers of the loyal bystanders and responded with equal courtesy to hisses.

Where the Avenue de Marigny crosses the Champs Elysées, a crazed critic fired a pistol at the king, using a periscope to aim over the heads of the crowd. He killed a royal horse. A musketeer of the Rear Guard gallantly cut it free and took its place in harness. The coach moved on.

For this loyal service the musketeer, Raoul de Potoir by name, demanded and received a pension for life.

The procession moved on: bands, ambassadors, professions, veterans, peasants in nylon country dress, leaders of parties, and loyal factions.

When at last the royal coach reached the Arc de Triomphe, the streets about the Place de la Concorde were still blocked with marchers waiting to get into the parade. But all of this is a matter of public record and of unparalleled newspaper coverage.

As the royal coach paused at the Arc de Triomphe, Queen Marie turned to speak to the king and found him gone. He had propped up his royal robes and crept away unnoticed in the crowd.

It was an angry queen who found him later, sitting on his balcony, polishing the eyepiece of his telescope.

“This is a fine thing,” she said. “I have never been so embarrassed in my life. What will the papers say? You will be the laughingstock of the world. What will the English say? Oh, I know. They won't say anything, but they'll look, and you'll see in their eyes that they remember how
their
queen stood and sat, stood and sat for thirteen hours without even going to the—Pippin, will you stop polishing that silly glass?”

“Be silent,” Pippin said softly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You have it, my dear, but be silent.”

“I don't understand you,” cried Marie. “Where in the world do you find the right to tell me to be silent? Who do you think you are?”

“I am the King,”
said Pippin, and this had not occurred to Marie. “That's funny,” he said. “I am, you know.” And it was so obviously true that Marie looked at him with startled eyes.

“Yes, Sire,” she said, and was silent.

“Starting to be a king is difficult, my dear,” he said apologetically.

 

 

The king paced back and forth in Charles Martel's room.

“You don't answer the telephone,” he complained. “You pay no attention to the pneumatique. I see there on the bust of Napoleon three letters delivered by hand, unopened. What is your explanation, sir?”

“Don't be so damn royal with me,” said Uncle Charlie irritably. “I don't even dare go out on the street. I haven't taken my shutters down since the coronation.”

“Which you did not attend,” said the king.

“Which I did not dare attend. I am driven to despair. Descendants of the old nobility think I have your private ear. I am glad to be able to tell the truth—that I have not seen you. There is a line in front of my shop every day. Were you followed here?”

“Followed? I was escorted!” said the king. “I haven't been alone for a week. They watch me awaken. They help me dress. They are in my bedroom. They practically come into my bathroom. When I crack my eggs their lips tighten. When I raise my spoon their eyes follow it to my mouth. And you think you are driven—”

“But you are their property,” said Uncle Charlie. “You, my dear nephew, are an extension of your people, and they have inalienable rights over your person.”

“I can't imagine how I let myself in for this,” said Pippin. “I didn't want to move to Versailles. I wasn't asked. I was moved. It's drafty there, Uncle Charlie. The beds are horrible. The floors creak. What are you mixing there?”

“A martini,” said Uncle Charlie. “I've learned it from a young friend of Clotilde's, an American. The first taste is dreadful, but it becomes progressively more delicious. It has some of the hypnotic qualities of morphine. Try it! Don't let the ice frighten you.”