Farewell, My Queen Read online

  “Good day to you, my pretty”; thus he greeted me from afar. “Have you come to inquire after the ostriches? The ducks are none too well either . . . but that’s normal for them: the water at Versailles kills them.”

  Even in 1789, I was already past the age for being addressed as “my pretty,” but Laroche and I were on those sorts of terms. I knew his gallantry was quite innocent, and—why not admit it?—though it cannot be said that I encouraged him, neither can it be claimed that I dissuaded him.

  The same period of time that saw the rockwork salon dry up, and the spirit of those indoor gatherings wither and die in sympathy, also witnessed the decline and death of the Menagerie’s outdoor residents. Laroche may have been a sun, but he was also a bane. First the elephant had drowned in a little pond. Barely a puddle. As the accident was such as to occasion surprise, there had been a brief inquiry, from which it emerged that at the time of falling down to rise no more, the victim was drunk. The elephant, Laroche had explained as he wept bitter tears over the loss of one of his favorite animals, needed its five daily liters of Burgundy wine. On that particular day, the beast had downed its quota somewhat quickly and in direct sunlight. Laroche had wept harder. What he had failed to mention was that he had granted himself succession rights to the privilege of the five bottles of wine! The elephant, that oh so affectionate, friendly, intelligent, gentle giant, was dead . . . An animal that wore “its nose on its sleeve,” as the Captain liked to repeat, quoting Count Buffon, whom he admired. Indeed, the reason he was often seen loitering near the entrance to the King’s Private Study was that he liked to glimpse the statue of Buffon that stood there. (He had thought at first that it was not a statue, but the great naturalist himself, stuffed and mounted!)

  After the elephant came the lion: he began to lose the hair of his mane and to act unwell. The lion was not as sweet-tempered as the elephant, but he had prestige. He had been delivered to us with great pomp and ceremony as a gift from His Most Heathen Majesty the King of Senegal to His Most Christian counterpart. He was treated concurrently as ambassador and prisoner. A red carpet was rolled out for him, tracing its crimson pathway from the great marble staircase to the Apollo Salon where the King sat in state for the occasion. The lion had arrived, confined in a cage that was inlaid with precious stones and drawn by three slave girls, blacker than ebony. The first of the trio bore a little note from her country’s king stuck like a curlpaper into the complex structure of her plaited hair. That monarch informed Louis XVI that the young women were henceforth his property and that he could, at his pleasure, keep them for his own use, give them away as gifts, or feed them to the lion. Louis XVI had consigned them to the Menagerie. There the three of them lived, arms constantly intertwined, spending their time doing and undoing one another’s hair, and speaking a language punctuated by shrill bursts of laughter that made you shiver. Their gestures were sharp and enigmatic. They had contrived to communicate with our world only so they could have sumptuous fabrics brought to them. They draped the material over their bodies without sewing it. Their dressing-up sessions were also the few quiet periods in their existence: they would only whisper or gaze at each other in silence. They would appear so deeply lost in thought that if, without blaspheming, you could have attributed souls to those creatures, you would have said they were at prayer . . . There was one other quiet time for them; that was when they stood on the shore and watched the boats set off for Trianon. They looked in solemn concentration at the big gondola-shaped craft, the yachts, frigates, and feluccas laden with courtiers. Under the unwavering stare of those eyes, haunted by vistas unknown to us, the courtiers would fall silent and return the stare, so that something resembling a wind of petrification passed between the three Africans and the Queen’s Trianon-bound guests . . . And what of the Africans and the Queen? I was convinced that between them nothing could pass, and my opinion has not changed. For it was not so much a matter of passing, but rather something else, something indefinable, a tiny patch of similarity in the mutual passion for stuffs, in the rapture engendered by contact with stuffs. An unlikely patch . . . A love patch?

  Yes, if I think now of the Queen as I saw her that morning, with her wide lace sleeves, she all pink and delicate, motionless, her lips parted, while her eyes were fixed on those little pieces of fabric, those swatches of her finest gowns, the word that comes to my mind is love . . .

  The lion, too, had died. Laroche had known a terrible feeling of helplessness. He had asked the King for an audience. A very young Louis XVI, who was known at that time as Louis the Virtuous and desired to earn the title Louis the Stern (I never did find out whether he meant “instead of” or “as well as”), heard Laroche’s petition: for an end to the slaughter at the Menagerie. Though well disposed, Louis XVI had not been much comfort. His manner had been evasive. At Versailles, the hot weather brought maladies with it. At such times, a goodly number of humans were unwell, too, and some died. He mentioned a certain Monsieur de Las, who had suffered an open fracture when he fell off his horse. Presently he lay dying in a hunting lodge, where family members had had him conveyed so they could stop being forced to hear his howls of pain.

  “But the humans can say what’s bothering them. Whereas my animals implore me with their dying eyes and can’t give me the least hint of what is tormenting them. I’m about to lose the polar bear,” Monsieur de Laroche had moaned, twisting his handkerchief. “Can His Majesty conceive of my suffering?”

  “No,” the King had said. “No, I cannot.”

  Then, perhaps to punish himself for his lack of feeling, Louis XVI had cast aside the bunch of thyme he was holding under his nose, had bent over toward the despairing man and breathing deeply, inhaled him to the full. And—oh, wondrous working of divine royal essence—the King, so far from being indisposed by what he smelled, drew strength from it. He had squared his shoulders, which he normally held somewhat stooped atop his longish, flabby arms, and smiled.

  “I hold you in great affection, Laroche,” he had stated, speaking with his choppy diction. “Let me see you occasionally at my Couchees, I shall be most pleased. As for the animals in the Menagerie, stop tormenting yourself on that score. There are hordes of animals here on earth. God provides for their existence in vast quantities, and He is not ungenerous about replenishing their numbers. Polar bears, for instance, abound in the Far North.”

  “I will resign myself to the inevitable. My polar bear is ill, very ill, and I can do nothing about it. Well, never mind! Enough of that!”

  From then on, Monsieur de Laroche had stopped talking about the health of his animals when at Court. He discussed it only at the Menagerie. But he had carried away from his conversation with the King a mania for saying “Enough of that,” on any and every occasion. And the words had become a catchphrase among the courtiers, who, initially to make fun of Laroche, then later for no good reason, punctuated their conversations with the ritual formula. There were days when it seemed to me that all I heard anyone say was “Enough of that.”

  Laroche drew near; I was submerged in his smell. (Silently, I recited the prayer to the dying: “I beseech you, O Lord, to forgive me the pleasure I have taken in seeking out perfumes and good smells and for having allowed myself to become fastidious in the avoidance of bad ones . . . ”) Moderating his voice, he asked me the reason for my visit. Really, the ostrich? No, not the ostrich . . . It was a long time since we had seen each other, I missed him . . . He was delighted and paid me some compliment or other in return. He, too, was glad to have a companion during the idle hours of this July afternoon.

  “Is all well up there?” he said, pointing to the château.

  “I haven’t noticed anything out-of-the-way. Two-thirds of the courtiers have colds, and the rest of them sneeze and wipe their noses to be in tune with the group. But you aren’t putting your question to the best-informed person. I’m scarcely ever away from my books and am not invited to the Royal Council Meetings.”

  “I should hope not. A lot of g
ood they do! Those meetings are merely so many traps laid for our King, with his natural inclination to justice. The Royal Council Meetings indeed! Even thinking about them makes my blood boil with indignation. The very idea of daring to advise so wise a king as ours is a piece of insolence. Take Master Necker, for instance, can you imagine a more pretentious individual? A more dreadful counting clerk? I heard his opening speech at the meeting of the Estates-General. I could have climbed the wall with boredom! Figures, figures, and more figures! For two hours. Even he finally couldn’t go on. After half an hour, he had to get a reader to take his place. I’d never seen anything like it: a speaker in the middle of inflicting a punishing schoolroom assignment on his listeners and giving up on it before they do!”

  “And you’ll never see anything like it again. At any rate not involving Necker.”

  “Why so? Don’t tell me he’s learned how to be interesting.”

  “That, I doubt, but in any case, there is no more Necker. He’s been dismissed. Had you not heard? He was dismissed on Saturday. That’s the big news of the moment.”

  “My animals are very ill-informed. And so, as a result, am I. But, my word, Necker dismissed! Now that is good news. Tell me all about it.”

  “All I know is that on the eleventh—Saturday, then—at three in the afternoon, his friend Count La Luzerne, Secretary of State for Naval Affairs, came to him bringing a letter in the King’s name. His Majesty requested that he resign and discreetly leave the country.”

  “If it had been me, I would have thrown him in prison.”

  “That’s exactly what Baron de Breteuil says. He wanted Necker arrested.”

  “That opening session of the Estates-General was sheer torture. A two-hour speech, and from that lout! Hundreds and hundreds of figures. A crashing bore should never be forgiven. But, my dear friend, you are obviously far too modest. The truth is that you are magnificently well informed. You didn’t find that kind of news in the novels of Madame de La Fayette, Marivaux, or Madame de Tencin.”

  “You flatter me, sir. Everyone knows about Necker. Nobody is talking about anything else. For my part, it all makes my head spin. Fortunately, Monsieur Moreau quite likes to sit me down and explain what is happening. Or at least to the extent that I can follow his thought, for he contemplates History from such a height that he can distinguish neither trifles nor anecdotes. He embraces only the essential.”

  “And what does our gentleman Historiographer of France have to say about the dismissal of that jackass?”

  “Like everyone else, he ardently desired it. He continues, however, to say: ‘There’s going to be trouble.’ But he’s been saying that for many a day.”

  Laroche’s face clouded over momentarily; just long enough for a great idea to come to him.

  “If they’ve dismissed Necker, then his post is vacant! I’ll be a first-rate Minister of Finance. I’ll retrench in fine style, frills and essentials will both have to go. I’ll start with the essentials; by the time I get around to doing away with the frills, the French will long since have lost the strength to protest.”

  “Take care. If you go too far in your attempt to cut expenditures, you’re apt to get cut from the cabinet yourself. That’s what led to Necker’s downfall. His tendency to economize, his excessive concern about matters of food supplies, and his timidity when faced with the disruptive influences so prevalent in Paris, his reluctance to strike hard and strike fast. He gave the impression of wavering, of tacking and turning . . . ”

  Laroche began to laugh—with that abrupt laugh of his that did not allow others to share in the laughter. (He had that in common with his King: not, as he liked to think, the same good judgment, but the same laugh.)

  “Look how green it is hereabouts, those days of rain are what did the trick,” he had added, turning toward the meadows that bordered the Menagerie.

  Close by, there was a vast farm; its tenants exploited that part of the grounds, and its splendid herds grazed indiscriminately among the fallow deer and the roe deer, supplying some part of the milk products needed by the Court. The remaining part was provided by the farm at the Petit Trianon. This side of the grounds gave an impression of lush green abundance. It made one think of Switzerland, if Monsieur de Besenval, who came from Switzerland, was to be believed. For my part, I was born beside the sea, so it didn’t remind me of anything at all.

  The Captain turned his attention away from this rural scene. He likewise ignored the Pheasantry lying next to the farm and turned instead to face the Saint-Cyr road, at one end of the Menagerie.

  “No one goes by along that road. What purpose does it serve? The convicts from the prison repair it regularly. They bring a bit of life to the place for a few weeks. They certainly sing well, those fellows! And then they vanish. And there’s nobody there anymore.”

  “And don’t people on horseback use the road?”

  “Small chance of that! If they’re gentry, they consider a road to be a restraint on their freedom. They simply ride cross-country. Just like at the customs house when you come to enter Paris: a young man of good birth doesn’t slow down. He whips up his team, and any customs employee who has the nerve to try and stop him gets sent flying. That’s how it was when I was a young fellow, and I’m sure it’s still the same.”

  “I never go to Paris. Heaven forbid I ever should!”

  “Nor do I. What would take me there? That’s why I’m telling you about my younger days.”

  “And did you behave like a young man of good birth?”

  “Of course. I always drove into Paris at a gallop. I can still hear the shouts of the passersby. The watch didn’t dare to stop me. He took it out on the ones who looked poor and needy. He would vent his fury by thrusting his pike into wagon loads of hay to fish out any stowaways.”

  “Fish them out?”

  “Or finish them off! . . . The King is too benevolent . . . He sacrifices himself for the sake of his people. A pack of good-for-nothings who don’t deserve his benevolence. He builds roads for them, and cities, orders the ports to be fortified and sends ships out to sea. The wiser course is not to do anything. Not build, not repair. Just let everything fall to bits . . . I shall be Minister of Ignorance. Minister of Abysmal Ignorance. ‘When all the mixed-up atoms have been separated out and returned to their original place, God will cover the whole world in absolute ignorance, so that all the creatures who now make up the world shall stay within the limits of their nature and not desire anything foreign to them nor anything better; for, in the lower echelons of the world, there shall be neither mention nor knowledge of what is to be had in the upper echelons, so that no souls can desire that which they cannot possess, and such desire cannot become a source of torment to them.’ Basilides, my dear. Greater even than Buffon . . . ‘So that all the creatures that now make up the world shall stay within the limits of their nature and not desire anything foreign to them nor anything better . . .’ They’re going to have a hard time up there finding a replacement for Necker . . . Still, if you assure me that everything is peaceful, I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Better than peaceful, serene.”

  “In that case, everything is the best it can be, and the only dark spot left on my horizon (and it concerns no one but me) is the ailment afflicting my ostrich . . . But, you know, I haven’t heard the royal hunt, not yesterday and not today. All is well, but the King isn’t hunting . . . Well, enough of that!”

  “No, not enough of that; let’s talk about it,” I said, for I felt once again a vague uneasiness—the sense of strangeness I had had early that morning in the streets of Versailles.

  But Monsieur de Laroche had moved on to another subject.

  “And what are the King’s Couchees like, these days?”

  “Dismal, I’m told. Poorly attended.”

  A triumphant expression lit the Captain’s face. He blamed this disaffection on the ban that had excluded him from the Couchees. He harbored no resentment toward the King. Obviously it was all a plot at
some lower level. Louis XVI had yielded to pressure from the other Couchee participants. Especially the page boys, for whom there was no possibility of stealthily opening a window and staying there, hidden from sight. There had been a universal complaint brought to the royal ears by the King’s First Valet for the trimester. Louis XVI had bowed to the inevitable; in any case, he had lost his taste for merriment. Laroche’s madcap behavior, which occasionally involved pulling off other men’s wigs and tossing them up onto the bed canopy or, like the King himself, laughing fit to burst as he tickled the ticklish, was not missed . . .

  “The fun we had at those Couchees!” said Laroche.

  And he dragged me off to the monkey enclosure. Then, as though suffering an attack of delirium, he rolled on the ground uttering cries. The monkeys leapt from end to end of their cage, hung by one arm, spun round and round. When his fit had passed, the Captain-Custodian got to his feet, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and solemnly declared: