LOUIS XIV
Looking over the inner Cour de Marbre at Versailles Palace were two little rooms, in the main pile of the building, which constituted the very core of privacy in the Petits Appartements du Roi. One was his Majesty’s “den,” the other his wig-room, and both were elegantly simple, almost severe, in their appointments. In the Galerie des Glaces adjoining, marble, paint, crystal, and silver, in lavish profusion, represented to the public eye the habitual equipage of a Grand Monarch; these more restful surroundings represented to the monarch himself his secret possession of some emotions felt in common with the vulgar herd, to wit, the joys of a retreat where he could do just as he liked, without the necessity of posing to himself or others. A few chairs, a table, a secrétaire—all profusely painted and be-ormolued, it was true, but for the simple reason that beauty unadorned was unprocurable in the Paris of the period—sober hangings, a quiet picture or so—such was the furniture of the little apartment appropriated by Louis XIV. to his inmost meditations.
We find him in this distinguished snuggery on a certain afternoon of the year 1704—the twenty-first of August, to be exact. It is within three days of St. Bartholomew, a feast which his Most Catholic Majesty makes a particular point of solemnising. He is, in fact, pondering a minor detail of its observances at this very moment.
As he sits, his eyes fixed on nothingness in crinkled abstraction, we will seize the fearful opportunity to scrutinise him. He is sixty-six years of age, and in suggestion, we think, more like a queen-dowager than a monarch. His minute stature, his old-matronly face, worldly, shrewd, not unkindly; his immense falling wig, resembling a cap with hanging wattles; his feminine particularities and prejudices, all combine to convey that false impression of his sex. He has a woman’s tastes for dainty clothes and china and gossip; I am convinced that, were it possible to conceive him stooping to the condescension, he would play the part of Madame more realistically than the Chevalier d’Eon himself came to play it.
He is attired (for monarchs do not dress) in a full-skirted coat of apricot velvet, with silver frogs. The coat is left unbuttoned from neck to waist, revealing an ample breast of cambric and a rich lace cravat. His white silk stockings are rolled back over their garters, which are fastened above the knee, and embrace breeches of the same velvet material; and stiff diamond-buckled shoes, with square toes, long tongues, and very high silver heels, complete the exquisite picture.
So he poses, and posed, as punctilious in his homage to himself as any courtier. If he did not appear, in bulk, a star of the first magnitude, he was as brilliant a centre as his own dazzled system need desire.
An odd train of thought was in Louis’s mind as he sat thus gazing into vacancy. The nearness of the Feast of St. Bartholomew was its central subject, since it entailed the repetition of a custom long practised by him to significant effect. Or had there been any connection between the custom and the effect? That was just the question in his mind. He was inclining, for some extraordinary reason, to doubt for the first time their relationship. It had come upon him all in an instant at what, adopting the fashion, we must call a psychologic moment in his career.
He was not, according to some people, a really wise man; but there was no denying that he was a supremely self-sufficient. It had never occurred to him, in all his life, that his judgment could possibly be surpassed by another. That was the queer thing. He had tacitly, almost unconsciously, it seemed, permitted, in one curious instance, his mental supremacy to subordinate itself to a superstition. He appeared to recognise the fact all at once, and with an amazement that was like one of those sudden developments of reason which a child will exhibit between a single night’s sleeping and waking. Something had happened to him, and he saw himself in a moment—not a fool; that were impossible—but, in a certain solitary direction, a dupe to his own modesty. Quality, kingship, all his greatness as it stood, he had let be accounted, by default, less to the essence of divinity in himself than to a paltry charm, in the accidental possession of which any quacksalver might boast himself omniscient. He felt strangely small all of a sudden.
Presently he stirred, and threw out his chest. Small! He, Louis? Had he not made France what she was? Had he not in the blood of two great wars, prolonged, triumphant, deadly, cemented the fabric of state of which he stood, golden, sacrosanct, the supreme expression? Was he not at this date the most powerful monarch, the most glorious, the most dreaded that a dazzled world had ever worshipped? And since some there remained who questioned his preeminence, were not his armies at this moment opening a third victorious campaign in order to re-convince the recalcitrants? And to what was all this success to be attributed—to his own mastering genius, inspired, stupendous, or to his possession of a trumpery talisman, whose favour, even, was conditional?
He drew in his breath, with a slight hissing sound, as if he had been stung. Superstition? an aberration, to which the mightiest were subject. He thanked his majestic stars only that the knowledge of it was private to himself.
He half rose, and sank into his chair again, with a frown. It was his custom, he told himself haughtily, to command Destiny, not truckle to it. How had he come to concede even this single exception to his custom? There was a blind spot, it was said, in every eye; perhaps there was some like defect in every kingly constitution. The heel of Achilles! Or, maybe—what else?
Age!
The word seemed to smite him out of the depths. He almost jumped where he sat. This business, so childish in its credulity! Merciful Heaven! was it possible he could be verging on his second childhood—he, Louis, who had almost come to convince himself that he was destined to the fiery chariot? Of late the sun discs, the emblems of the Roi soleil, had increased in number on his walls and ceilings. Perhaps they, too, were a sign of his dotage.
He hesitated no longer, but, rising hastily, sought the secrétaire against the wall, and, feeling in a very remote and secret little recess of it, brought out a tiny packet, somewhat like a Hebrew phylactery in suggestion. It was no more than a couple of inches or so square, of vellum, flattish in form, and closely sealed with an odd, incomprehensible device. A number of pin-pricks perforated it.
As he stood, holding the thing in his hand, the time and occasion on which he had consented to its acceptance rose vividly before him. It had been a black night in a certain October long past, when a dark Italian monk, a famed astrologer, had waited on him by appointment in his Sêvres villa. He recalled how, consequent on his casting of the royal horoscope, this sardonic Genethliac had offered him (for a weighty consideration), as a defence against certain threatened complications in his royal ecliptic, the very talisman he now regarded, and which, saddled with a condition, was to procure him consistent happiness and prosperity throughout his reign. And he recalled how he had accepted the terms, covenanting, on pain of disaster, to preserve the charm intact, and, moreover, to plunge, on the occasion of every notable Church festival, a pin through its sides.
A naïve undertaking, perhaps, yet seeming justified in its results. Half credulous, half contemptuous, and entirely good-humoured, he had been faithful to the conditions, and had certainly prospered. The thing had become a habit with him, and his conscience had never felt a scruple in its performance. Why should it? Was not the bestower of the gift a consecrated priest? He could find a hundred reasons for tolerating his superstition, and not one for condemning it. Probably, if the truth were known, the packet contained what might be called a black, or contrary relic—a lock of Judas’s hair, a shaving of Ananias’s toe-nail, a scale of Saladin’s liver, or one shed by the devil himself when he struggled in St. Dunstan’s tongs. Or more likely it contained nothing at all, and had served for a mere trick to extort money.
He held it out at arm’s length, with a smile on his face. The absurdity of his compliance had struck him all at once acutely. That his destiny, through all these long years, could have hung at the mercy of so ridiculous a trifle! He was great because he was great, a conqueror by force of inherent genius. Away for once and for ever with the imposture!
One moment he held the packet up to the light, and saw a hundred tiny stars shine through the punctures he had made in it on successive feasts; the next he broke the seals, unfolded the vellum, stared, dropped the whole on the floor, and staggered back as if stricken to the heart.
There, at his feet, it lay revealed before him—the thing that he had done; and he knew that he, the most Christian King, he who had revoked the Edict of Nantes, he who had rooted up the tares and made all France one crop of catholicity, he who stood for Heaven’s vicegerent, its high priest, its super-pope, had been for years stabbing the Blessed Host, the consecrated wafer!
As he thus dwelt, motionless, aghast, a knock came at his door. He collected himself by a wrenching effort, and bade the intruder into his presence.
It was a courier from the Maréchal de Villeroy, introduced by a favoured courtier. Both men were agitated and death-pale. They came to inform his Majesty that his entire army, under Marshal Tallard, had been destroyed, or had capitulated to the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim, in Bavaria.
The King at first answered nothing; but his eyes were observed to wander towards a scrap of vellum, apparently insignificant, which lay upon the floor. And then he recovered himself, with a courageous smile.
“But that is very bad news, my friend,” he said.