The Exchange of Princesses by Chantal Thomas

Author:Chantal Thomas [Thomas, Chantal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-703-1
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2015-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

The Basket of Delights

It’s true, what they told the infanta. The plan is for her to join the king two days after his departure from Paris. The Gazette confirms it: “The Queen-Infanta arrived here on the afternoon of the 17th, and the King, having gone to welcome her, escorted her through the Grand Apartment to the one prepared for her use.”

She kneels, he lifts her up, kneels in his turn, takes her hand. He repeats the formula: “I am delighted that you have arrived in good health.” Or maybe he ventures a variation: “I am glad that your journey has been completed without incident,” or even, “I am overjoyed to receive you in Versailles, birthplace of your father, His Majesty the king of Spain.” Then again, his mood probably isn’t good enough to tempt him into such improvisations; in fact, it would be more in character for him not to say a word. But he’s smiling, and the happiness he felt as he trod the paving stones of the Marble Court again hasn’t dissipated. This air of joy further enhances his beauty. The queen-infanta doesn’t take her eyes off him. True to herself, she babbles, managing brief pauses for him to make some reply, and then chattering on more volubly than before, all the while being careful not to trip on the carpets.

He escorts her to her apartment. They go through the seven rooms of the Grand Apartment, previously the residence of his great-grandfather. The place where the young king lays his head at night is the same as the one from which the dying voice predicted to him, “Darling boy, you will be a great king …” The queen-infanta is lodged in the queen’s apartment, formerly occupied by Louis XIV’s wife, Maria Theresa of Spain (the infanta Maria Theresa, whose painted portrait Mariana Victoria couldn’t look at) and then by the dauphine, the very young Duchess of Burgundy, married at the age of twelve. Thus young Louis escorts the little girl to the very chamber once occupied by his mother. And whereas in the park he desires to find everything as it was before, and the uncut grass, the uneven ground, the rust, and the cracked or broken statues and basins do not prevent him from believing that nothing has changed, here within these darkly paneled walls, in the room where his life began and where all the furniture and every nook belong to his prehistory, it doesn’t seem to him that he recognizes anything. The strangeness is oppressive. A sudden panic seizes him, and he feels the hollow presence of oblivion like an intolerable weight. He goes away. He turns his back on the newly ventilated chamber, on Maman Ventadour, submerged in emotion and distracted by the things she must take care of, on the infanta, on the infanta’s ladies — and on a painting titled Departing for the Falcon Hunt: three or four women prepare to mount richly harnessed horses. One of the women, in the left foreground, attracts the eye.

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