were after the manner of Annibale Carracci, and included various portraits of famous men. We took them off the wall to see whether there might be a secret compartment behind them, but were disappointed. The felt of the billiard table, all covered in dust, had turned from bright green to the colour of dew. One solitary white ball lay in the middle of the table, abandoned and imprisoned, almost a metaphor for the heart of Louise de la Valliere, a hostage in the wilderness of Louis's indifference. Atto gave it a sharp tap, causing it to bounce on the opposite cushion, then continued his account.
Thus, the King very soon went to see Mademoiselle de la Valliere only to delight in the coquetry and provocations of another lady, Madame de Montespan, known as Athenais. One day, having to depart for the wars in Flanders, he left Louise alone at Versailles, four months with child, and took Madame de Montespan with him, in the Queen's retinue.
'Ladies of the court at war? And even the Queen?'
'But with all that you have read on your own account, did you not even know that?' he asked, as we left the billiard room and turned to the great dining hall.
Thence, we entered a room that led to the back of the garden, facing east. We went out. Here began a drive which led, as we were soon to discover, to a gracious little grotto.'I tell you once more, I have been reading books, not false, lying newspapers,' I replied, irked and trying to cover a certain embarrassment.
'Very well, like the Turks, the King enjoyed dragging with him to the wars all the conveniences he enjoyed at court: the finest furniture of the crown, the porcelain, the golden cutlery and all that was needed to organise ballets and firework displays in every town he came to; and, of course, women.
What a strange experience for villagers and country folk, I thought, to witness at close quarters that mad mixture of war and the festivities of the royal court, with plumed cavaliers escorting gilded carriages, unreal jewel cases concealing the most beautiful women in the realm!
'If only from the mud that spattered the decor, and from the King's face, thin and sunburnt,' continued Atto, 'and lastly from the tiredness of his women, exhausted by the voyage and the inhuman hours they were forced to keep, it was plain enough that this was no promenade in the park of Versailles. I remember one journey in particular. Passing Auxerre, where the women are rather good-looking, the inhabitants had all come out to see the royal family and the ladies in the carriage with the Queen. The ladies themselves put their heads out of the carriage windows to look. It was then that the good people of Auxerre burst out laughing: 'Ah, quelles sont laides' — 'How ugly they are!' The King laughed long and loud and spoke of nothing else that day,' laughed the Abbot.
The Most Christian King brought the whole court with him during the War of Devolution, which Louis started after the death of Philip IV his father-in-law, to claim a part of Spanish Flanders as Maria Teresa's inheritance.
'He brought just about everyone, except Louise, you said. And what about the Queen?'
'Maria Teresa was the first to be compelled to go, seeing that, at least nominally, the war was being fought on her behalf. And whenever a city fell into French hands, she had to go and take possession of it officially.'But Louise, a simple, passionate heart, decided to risk her pregnancy and brave the King's wrath by joining the court in Flanders. She arrived exhausted. The King, in no way impressed — on the contrary, much amused — listened to the description of the scene when the poor pregnant maiden slumped half dead, together with the ladies accompanying her, on the benches of Maria Teresa's antechamber, while the latter vomited out of fury and vexation.
Meanwhile, we had reached the little grotto. Surely, Capitor's dish could not be there, but we both felt the need to breathe clean air after all the dust with which we had filled our lungs.
In the purity of the breezes which my breast inhaled in the garden, I seemed to find the description of la Valliere: Louise the ingenue, the enthusiast; a timid zephyr soon swept aside.
'Was the King furious that his mistress had disobeyed him?' I asked as we left the grotto and continued along a little path.
'Apparently not; on the contrary, invited by the Queen to mount her carriage, he refused and went off to ride with Louise. And what was more, on the next day, going to mass, poor Maria Teresa found Louise entering her carriage, although everyone had to huddle together in order to make room for her, after which she had to put up with her presence at dinner that evening. On the next morrow, caring not a whit for his consort or for his mistress, he spent almost all day locked in his chamber. La Montespan did likewise. And it so happened that the two bedchambers were communicating.'
The Queen did not yet know that, with the arrival of Athenai's, she would have to resign herself to the most painful proximity: journeys in a carriage with her consort's two favourites became the rule, and in all things an official cohabitation was imposed upon all three. The mistresses were no better off than the Queen. Louis, continued the Abbot, kept them strictly sequestered under lock and key, and even if the one enjoyed ascendancy over the other, he took good care to keep them in a permanent state of anxiety, with herds of nameless concubines coming and going through their apartments. Every day, the official favourites suffocated in uncertainty, and the wretched spectacle of spite and squabbling somewhat calmed Maria Teresa's jealousy.
The path had brought us to an amphitheatre, far smaller than that which had been prepared at that time at Villa Spada for the spectacles accompanying the wedding, but graceful and delightfully mysterious. It was surrounded by a little portico decorated with antique bas-reliefs and with many vases of flowers; in the middle there was a little fountain, so that the portico, between one arch and the next, echoed its gentle splashing and gurgling.
'Around his heart, the King had built a tower of ice,' continued Atto, deeply absorbed in his narration and almost completely unmoved by so much beauty. 'Only great suffering could shake him a little, as on the death of children, and many of them did die. Of the six legitimate children, only one, the Grand Dauphin, is still living. When, about thirty years ago, his youngest son, the little Due d'Anjou, died, I saw him utterly broken: I feared that this might be a sign of God's wrath, but it did not last long. Even when Louise de la Valliere decided to enter a convent, the King was incapable of reacting with any sentiment other than anger.
'A convent?' I asked, as I slaked my thirst, gulping down great mouthfuls of good fresh water from the fountain.
'Yes, poor woman, hers was a sincere heart, and she had really asked nothing more than to love the King and be loved by him in return. She was the only favourite who loved Louis for himself alone, which greatly flattered him, but no more than that. She, however, had taken that feeling very seriously indeed; when she decided to take the veil as a Carmelite, she publicly begged the Queen's pardon. 'My sins were public and so must be my penitence.' She knelt at Maria Teresa's feet; deeply moved, the Queen raised her and kissed her. A multitude of persons were present. It was a moment of intense emotion. Only the King was absent.'We returned to the house, and in a very short time we completed our search of the ground floor. The Abbot looked disconsolately at our reflections in a great mirror. With our apparel whitened with dust and all the cobwebs in our hair, we looked like a pair of rag-and- bone men.
'What are we to do now, Signor Atto, shall we go up to the first floor?'
'Yes, and not only to look for the dish.'
Once on the first floor, Atto guided me to the bath chamber near the little chapel.
'Hie corpus,' exclaimed Atto, repeating the motto over the entrance, which we had already read three days earlier. 'We shall take advantage of the wonders of hydraulics, if they still work.'
So he opened the tap marked calida, hot water, but nothing came out. He tried the tap marked frigida and was more fortunate.
'Open up those chests: perhaps there are still some towels.'
Atto had guessed correctly. Although old and dried up, the cloths had remained free of dust. I even found some hard lumps of soap. Thus we were able, first he and then I, to wash and cleanse ourselves to our heart's content.
Yet again, we set out in search of Capitor's treasures, but above all the dish.
On the first floor, composed of four little rooms and the great gallery which lines of mirrors seemed to prolong all the way to the Vatican palaces, there was indeed much to inspect. We opened the drawers of massive ebony chests inlaid with ivory and brass, or oak roots with inlays of briar, full of old porcelain cups; we turned back shutters painted in bright colours and with great difficulty shifted huge dark cupboards, carved with spirals and leaves, with stags' heads on either side, or columns carved in the form of satyrs; we moved grim chests and dusty crystal mirrors. We removed the imposing mirror above the mantelpiece, first taking from it a multitude of statuettes in the finest porcelain, such as a blonde and delicate shepherdess with a pannier on her shoulders and, among the more bizarre ones, a young chimney-sweep complete with beret and ladder, and even a Chinese
