“Come in,” he said. “I’m afraid the children went to the market, but no doubt they’ll be back soon.” It was annoying to have his work interrupted, but he hoped he didn’t show it.
She stepped in and glanced around.
“You have always lived here?” she inquired.
“Yes. It was my parents’ house. I enlarged it some years ago.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “Your parents are still living?”
“No. I lost them in the plague of ’96.”
The plague had returned to Paris twice since his childhood. Once in 1580, then again in 1596. The first time it had missed this little enclave of the city. The second time, he had been away in Lyon on business and returned to find both his parents gone.
Simon tried to think of something to say. His children had many friends, and he didn’t always remember the details of all their families.
“I forget how many children you have,” he said.
“Just three.”
“Ah yes. The same as me.”
They had stepped into the parlor. It was well furnished. There was a pair of square, upright walnut armchairs with panels of Brussels tapestries across their backs, and a carved trestle table. There was a Turkey carpet on the floor, and a tapestry hanging on the wall. Simon was rather proud of it. So he was pleased when the woman glanced around admiringly and remarked that he had a very handsome parlor.
“I see your business prospers,” she remarked with a smile.
Unlike his father, Simon had not refused to accept any help from his relations. When Guy’s father had offered to put him in the Italian trade, importing silk and leather gloves, he had gladly accepted, and the results had been excellent. Indeed, he could have increased his fortune more had he wished to. But he didn’t. He’d enlarged the house. His family wanted for nothing. But that was enough. He was a member of a guild, but he took no part in its politics. He did not want to impress anyone. He hoped his children would marry into solid, honest families, but not more than that. He had never moved from the quiet spot at the end of the alley which remained a haven of peace and quiet in a stormy world.
His visitor was smiling at him.
“You do not remember me.”
“Forgive me.” He gave her an embarrassed look. It was no use pretending. “My children have so many friends …”
“The fault is mine. You are clearly expecting someone. The mother of some child your children know. But I am someone else. I was last in Paris thirty-two years ago. I did not even know your name. But I came here to see if you still lived here, because I owe you thanks. When I was a little girl, you saved my life. Do you know me now?”
He stared at her in amazement.
“My God. You are the little Protestant girl. You are Constance?”
“I would have sent you a message years ago, but when your father left me with my relations in La Rochelle, all those years ago, he would not even tell them his name. He just hurried away.”
“I didn’t know that.” Simon nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that in those days, when it was dangerous even to help a Protestant, he might have thought he was protecting our family that way.”
“I think so too. And if I ever knew your family name, I certainly forgot it. I was only five. But I always meant to thank you. So when I arrived in Paris the other day, I set out to find the house. I thought I could remember it.”
“And you did.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “Well, after wandering around looking for an hour. I wondered if you would still be living here, and I had no idea if I’d recognize you if you were. But when you opened the door, I thought it was you. And then before I could say anything, you asked me in.”
“But this is wonderful.” He nodded to himself as he remembered. “When my father came back from La Rochelle, he told us you were safe. Then not long after, the royal army came to take La Rochelle. The Protestants held out there so strongly that the army gave up. But we heard that many people had died during the siege, so I had no idea whether you had survived. And here you are. You must bring your husband and children to meet my children.”
“We are still Protestants, you know.”
Simon shrugged.
“It’s legal, now,” he said.
The truth was that, though a Catholic himself, Simon Renard didn’t much care what religion people followed anymore. Even now, he could still remember his sense of shock as a boy that Christians could murder innocents in the street in the name of their faith, and his sense of disappointment when Uncle Guy had seemed to condone it. He had joined that large body of moderate Catholics who felt—no matter what the pope said—that such horrors were against the Christian spirit.
“Well, I should be happy to bring my children to meet your family,” she said. “But alas I cannot bring my husband. He died two years ago. I have come to Paris with my brother-in-law and his family. Our children have grown up together. And when some friends of his urged him to come and join the Protestant church here in Paris, we decided we’d all come together.”
“Then you shall all come,” said Simon. “We shall have a reunion.” And he was about to tell her that his own wife had died, but for some reason he decided not to. Not just yet.
So it was agreed that they should all meet the following Saturday afternoon. Then Constance left.
After she had gone, Simon went back to attend to his business. But for some reason, he found it hard to concentrate.
Did Constance remember that in those far-off days when they were both little children, he had taught her the alphabet? Perhaps. He must ask her. Did she remember that when she was about to leave with his father, he had declared he would marry her? Probably not.
That was certainly out of the question. King Henry might have made peace, but Catholics and Protestants didn’t marry.
He realized that he had never even been inside a Protestant church. He had no idea what one of their services was like.
Perhaps he’d ask Constance and her brother-in-law to take him to one. There could be no harm in that.
Chapter Twelve
• 1898 •
It was a cold January afternoon when Roland brought Marie to Versailles. The trees were bare, and the sky was gray. The palace was closed to visitors that day, but he’d arranged a private tour, and he acted as her guide.
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 wo
uld 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 t
his, 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.”