It has been said that journeys injure love, because they distract
the mind; it has also been said that they strengthen love, because
they give one time to dream over it. The chevalier was too young to
make such nice distinctions. Weary of the carriage, when half-way on
his journey, he had taken a saddle-hack and thus arrived toward five
o’clock in the evening at the “Sun” Inn--a sign then out of fashion,
since it dated back to the time of Louis XIV.
There was, at Versailles, an old priest who had been rector of a church
near Neauflette; the chevalier knew him and loved him. This curé, poor
and simple himself, had a nephew, who held a benefice, a court abbé,
who might therefore be useful. So the chevalier went to this nephew
who--man of importance as he was--his chin ensconced in his “rabat,”
received the newcomer civilly, and condescended to listen to his
request.
“Come!” said he, “you arrive at a fortunate moment. This is to be an
opera-night at the court, some sort of fête or other. I am not going,
because I am sulking so as to get something out of the marquise; but
here I happen to have a note from the Duc d’Aumont; I asked for it for
some one else, but never mind, you can have it. Go to the fête; you
have not yet been presented, it is true, but, for this entertainment,
that is not necessary. Try to be in the King’s way when he goes into
the little _foyer_. One look, and your fortune is made.”
The chevalier thanked the abbé, and, worn out by a disturbed night and
a day on horseback, he made his toilet at the inn in that negligent
manner which so well becomes a lover. A maid-servant, whose experience
had been decidedly limited, dressed his wig as best she could, covering
his spangled coat with powder. Thus he turned his steps toward his luck
with the hopeful courage of twenty summers.
The night was falling when he arrived at the château. He timidly
advanced to the gate and asked his way of a sentry. He was shown the
grand staircase. There he was informed by the tall Swiss that the opera
had just commenced, and that the King, that is to say, everybody, was
in the hall.[8]
“If Monsieur le Marquis will cross the court,” added the doorkeeper (he
conferred the title of “Marquis” at a venture), “he will be at the play
in an instant. If he prefers to go through the apartments--”
The chevalier was not acquainted with the palace.
Curiosity prompted him, at first, to reply that he would cross the
apartments; then, as a lackey offered to follow as a guide, an impulse
of vanity made him add that he needed no escort. He, therefore, went
forward alone, but not without a certain emotion of timidity.
Versailles was resplendent with light. From the ground-floor to the
roof there glittered and blazed lustres, chandeliers, gilded furniture,
marbles. With the exception of the Queen’s apartments, the doors were
everywhere thrown open. As the chevalier walked on he was struck with
an astonishment and an admiration better imagined than described, for
the wonder of the spectacle that offered itself to his gaze was not
only the beauty, the sparkle of the display itself, but the absolute
solitude which surrounded him in this enchanted wilderness.
To find one’s self alone in a vast enclosure, be it temple,
cloister, or castle, produces a strange, even a weird feeling. The
monument--whatever it be--seems to weigh upon the solitary individual;
its walls gaze at him; its echoes are listening to him; the noise of
his steps breaks in upon a silence so deep that he is impressed by an
involuntary fear and dares not advance without a feeling akin to awe.
Such were the chevalier’s first impressions, but curiosity soon got the
upper hand and drew him on. The candelabra of the Gallery of Mirrors,
looking into the polished surfaces, saw their flames redoubled in
them. Every one knows what countless thousands of cherubs, nymphs, and
shepherdesses disport themselves on the panelings, flutter about on
the ceilings, and seem to encircle the entire palace as with an immense
garland. Here, vast halls, with canopies of velvet shot with gold and
chairs of state still impressed with the stiff majesty of the “great
King”; there, creased and disordered ottomans, chairs in confusion
around a card-table; a never-ending succession of empty salons, where
all this magnificence shone out the more that it seemed entirely
useless. At intervals were half-concealed doors opening upon corridors
that extended as far as the eye could reach, a thousand staircases, a
thousand passages crossing each other as in a labyrinth; colonnades,
raised platforms built for giants, boudoirs ensconced in corners like
children’s hiding-places, an enormous painting of Vanloo near a mantel
of porphyry; a forgotten patch-box, lying beside a piece of grotesque
Chinese workmanship; here a crushing grandeur, there an effeminate
grace; and everywhere, in the midst of luxury, of prodigality, and of
indolence, a thousand intoxicating odors, strange and diverse, mingle
perfumes of flowers and women, an enervating warmth, the very material
and sensible atmosphere of pleasure itself.
To be in such a place, amid such marvels, at twenty, and to be there
alone, is surely quite sufficient cause for temporary intoxication. The
chevalier advanced at haphazard, as in a dream.
“A very palace of fairies,” he murmured, and, indeed, he seemed to
behold, unfolding itself before him, one of those tales in which
wandering knights discover enchanted castles. Were they indeed mortal
creatures that inhabited this matchless abode? Were they real women
who came and sat on these chairs and whose graceful outlines had left
on those cushions that slight impress, so suggestive, even yet, of
indolence? Who knows but that, behind those thick curtains, at the
end of some long dazzling gallery, there may perhaps soon appear a
princess asleep for the last hundred years, a fairy in hoops, an Armida
in spangles, or some court hamadryad that shall issue forth from this
marble column, or burst from out of that gilded panel?
Bewildered, almost overpowered, at the sight of all these novel
objects, the young chevalier, in order the better to indulge his
reverie, had thrown himself on a sofa, and would doubtless have
forgotten himself there for some time had he not remembered that he was
in love. What, at this hour, was Mademoiselle d’Annebault, his beloved,
doing--left behind in her old château?
“Athénaïs!” he exclaimed suddenly, “why do I thus waste my time here?
Is my mind wandering? Great heavens! Where am I? And what is going on
within me?”
He soon rose and continued his travels through this _terra
incognita_, and of course lost his way. Two or three lackeys,
speaking in a low voice, stood before him at the end of a gallery. He
walked toward them and asked how he should find his way to the play.
“If M. le Marquis,” he was answered (the same title being still
benevolently granted him), “will give himself the trouble to go down
that staircase and follow the gallery on the right, he will find at
the end of it three steps going up; he will then turn to the left, go
through the Diana salon, that of Apollo, that of the Muses, and that of
Spring; he will go down six steps more, then, leaving the Guards’ Hall
on his right and crossing over to the Ministers’ staircase, he will not
fail to meet there other ushers who will show him the way.”
“Much obliged,” said the chevalier, “with such excellent instruction,
it will certainly be my fault if I do not find my way.”
He set off again boldly, constantly stopping, however, in spite of
himself, to look from side to side, then once more remembering his
love. At last, at the end of a full quarter of an hour, he once more
found, as he had been told, a group of lackeys.
“M. le Marquis is mistaken,” they informed him; “it is through the
other wing of the château that he should have gone, but nothing is
easier for him than to retrace his steps. M. le Marquis has but to go
down this staircase, then he will cross the salon of the Nymphs, that
of Summer, that of--”
“I thank you,” said the chevalier, proceeding on his way. “How
foolish I am,” he thought, “to go on asking people in this fashion
like a rustic. I am making myself ridiculous to no purpose, and even
supposing--though it is not likely--that they are not laughing at me,
of what use is their list of names, and the pompous sobriquets of these
salons, not one of which I know?”
He made up his mind to go straight before him as far as possible.
“For, after all,” said he to himself, “this palace is very beautiful
and prodigiously vast, but it is not boundless, and, were it three
times as large as our rabbit enclosure, I must at last reach the end of
it.”
But it is not easy in Versailles to walk on for a long time in one
direction, and this rustic comparison of the royal dwelling to a rabbit
enclosure doubtless displeased the nymphs of the place, for they at
once set about leading the poor lover astray more than ever, and,
doubtless, to punish him, took pleasure in making him retrace his steps
over and over again, constantly bringing him back to the same place,
like a countryman lost in a thicket of quickset; thus did they shut him
in in this Cretan labyrinth of marble and gold.
In the “Antiquities of Rome,” by Piranesi, there is a series of
engravings which the artist calls “his dreams,” and which are supposed
to reproduce his own visions during a fit of delirious fever. These
engravings represent vast Gothic halls; on the flagstones are strewn
all sorts of engines and machines, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers,
catapults, the expression of enormous power and formidable resistance.
Along the walls you perceive a staircase, and upon this staircase,
climbing, not without trouble, Piranesi himself. Follow the steps
a little higher and they suddenly come to an end before an abyss.
Whatever has happened to poor Piranesi, you think that he has, at
any rate, reached the end of his labors, for he can not take another
step without falling; but lift your eyes and you will see a second
staircase rising in the air, and upon these stairs Piranesi again,
again on the brink of a precipice.
Look now still higher, and another staircase still rises before you,
and again poor Piranesi continuing his ascent, and so on, until the
everlasting staircase and the everlasting Piranesi disappear together
in the skies; that is to say, in the border of the engraving.
This allegory, offspring of a nightmare, represents with a high degree
of accuracy the tedium of useless labor and the species of vertigo
which is brought on by impatience. The chevalier, wandering incessantly
from salon to salon and from gallery to gallery, was at last seized
with a fit of downright exasperation.
“Parbleu,” said he, “but this is cruel! After having been so charmed,
so enraptured, so enthralled, to find myself alone in this cursed
palace.” (It was no longer a palace of fairies!) “I shall never be able
to get out of it! A plague upon the infatuation which inspired me with
the idea of entering this place, like Prince Fortunatus with his boots
of solid gold, instead of simply getting the first lackey I came across
to take me to the play at once!”
The chevalier experienced this tardy feeling of repentance for his
rashness at a moment when, like Piranesi, he was half-way up a
staircase, on a landing between three doors. Behind the middle one, he
thought he heard a murmur so sweet, so light, so voluptuous, that he
could not help listening. At the very instant when he was tremblingly
advancing with the indiscreet intention of eavesdropping, this door
swung open. A breath of air, balmy with a thousand perfumes, a torrent
of light that rendered the very mirrors of the gallery lustreless
struck him so suddenly that he perforce stepped back.
“Does Monsieur le Marquis wish to enter?” asked the usher who had
opened the door.
“I wish to go to the play,” replied the chevalier.
“It is just this moment over.”
At the same time, a bevy of beautiful ladies, their complexions
delicately tinted with white and carmine, escorted by lords, old and
young, who led them, not by the arm, nor even by the hand, but by the
tips of their fingers, began filing out from the Palace Theatre, taking
great care to walk sidewise, in order not to disarrange their hoops.
All of these brilliant people spoke in a low voice, with an air half
grave, half gay, a mixture of awe and respect.
“What can this be?” said the Chevalier, not guessing that chance had
luckily brought him to the little _foyer_.
“The King is about to pass,” replied the usher.
There is a kind of intrepidity, which hesitates at nothing; it
comes but too easily, it is the courage of vulgar people. Our young
provincial, although he was reasonably brave, did not possess this
faculty. At the mere words, “The King is about to pass,” he stood
motionless and almost terror-stricken.
King Louis XV, who when out hunting would ride on horseback a dozen
leagues with ease, was, in other respects, as is known, royally
indolent. He boasted, not without reason, that he was the first
gentleman of France, and his mistresses used to tell him, not without
truth, that he was the best built and the most handsome. It was
something to remember to see him leave his chair, and deign to walk in
person. When he crossed the _foyer_, with one arm laid, or rather
stretched, on the shoulder of Monsieur d’Argenson, while his red heel
glided over the polished floor (he had made his laziness the fashion),
all whisperings ceased; the courtiers lowered their heads, not daring
to bow outright, and the fine ladies, gently bending their knees
within the depths of their immense furbelows, ventured that coquettish
good-night which our grandmothers called a courtesy, and which our
century has replaced by the brutal English shake of the hand.
But the King paid attention to nothing, and saw only what pleased him.
Alfieri, perhaps, was there, and it is he who thus describes, in his
memoirs, his presentation at Versailles:
“I well knew that the king never spoke to strangers who were not of
striking appearance; all the same I could not brook the impassible and
frowning demeanor of Louis XV. He scanned from head to foot the man
who was being presented to him, and it looked as if he received no
impression by so doing. It seems to me, however, that if one were to
say to a giant, ‘Here is an ant I present to you,’ he would smile on
looking at it, or perhaps say, ‘Oh! what a little creature.’”
The taciturn monarch thus passed among these flowers of feminine
loveliness, and all this court, alone in spite of the crowd. It did
not require of the chevalier much reflection to understand that he had
nothing to hope from the King, and that the recital of his love would
obtain no success in that quarter.
“Unfortunate that I am!” thought he. “My father was but too well
informed when he told me that within two steps of the king I should see
an abyss between him and me. Were I to venture to ask for an audience,
who would be my patron? Who would present me? There he is--the absolute
master, who can by a word change my destiny, assure my fortune, fulfil
my desires. He is there before me; were I to stretch out my hand I
could touch his embroidered coat--and I feel myself farther from him
than if I were still buried in the depths of my native province! Oh! If
I could only speak to him! Only approach him! Who will come to my help?”
While the chevalier was in this unhappy state of mind he saw entering
with an air of the utmost grace and delicacy a young and attractive
woman, clad very simply in a white gown, without diamonds or
embroideries and with a single rose in her hair. She gave her hand
to a lord _tout à l’ambre_, as Voltaire expresses it, and spoke
softly to him behind her fan. Now chance willed it that, in chatting,
laughing, and gesticulating, this fan should slip from her and fall
beneath a chair, immediately in front of the chevalier. He at once
hurried to pick it up, and as in doing so he had set one knee on the
floor, the young lady appeared to him so charming that he presented her
the fan without rising. She stopped, smiled, and passed on, thanking
him with a slight movement of the head, but at the look she had given
the chevalier he felt his heart beat without knowing why. He was right.
This young lady was _la petite d’Étioles_, as the malcontents
still called her, while others in speaking of her said “la Marquise” in
that reverent tone in which one says “The Queen.”