The Confusion

M. le duc d’Arcachon I have never met. During my earlier life at Versailles, as a governess, I saw him from a distance a few times, surrounded by other big-wigs, but my social standing was so mean that there was no circumstance under which I could have met him. Later my status was elevated; but he was in “the South” tending to business of some nature. He was at Versailles through much of 1689, while I was absent; then he went back into “the South” a few weeks before I came there in December. He was supposed to be back for Christmas; but one thing and then another has kept him away. A few times a week Madame la duchesse receives a letter from Marseille, where M. le duc is looking after the galleys of the Mediterranean fleet; or Lyon, where he is meeting with the King’s money-men, and acquiring victuals, powder, amp;c; or Arcachon, where he is looking after Lavardac family affairs; or Brest, where he is responsible for shipment of men and materiel to the forces in Ireland. Madame la duchesse always replies on the same day, hoping her letter shall catch him before he has moved on to some other port. This has happened often enough that M. le duc has learned a little bit about me and my activities, or lack thereof, here; and lately he has begun writing to me personally at the cottage. It seems that I am to be useful to this family in some way other than as an eligible belle for Etienne. The Duc has recently become involved in some sort of momentous transaction that is in the offing down south, and that he expects to yield a large quantity of hard money when it comes off, which is expected to occur late in the summer. To report any more than this would be indiscreet, but if I am reading his most recent letter correctly, he wishes me to look after certain of the details: a large transfer of metal through Lyon.

So at last I shall have something to do, and can expect the passage of time to slow down again, as I go into violent movement, and change my relations with all around me.

Eliza, Countess de la Zeur

La Dunette MID-JULY 1690

LA DUNETTE MEANT “POOP DECK,” the high place on a ship’s stern-castle from which the captain could see everything. The name had come to Louis-Francois de Lavardac, duc d’Arcachon, some twelve years earlier, as he had stood upon the brow of the hill, peering, between two denuded trees, across the frozen bog that would later become the Piece d’eau des Suisses, at the southern flanks of the stupendous construction site that would shortly become the royal palace of Louis XIV.

The King got things built more quickly than anyone else, partly because he had the Army to help him and partly because he hired all of the qualified builders. And so La Dunette was still nothing more than an empty stretch of high ground with a clever name when le Roi had given his cousin, the duc d’Arcachon, a personal tour of the palace. They had lingered particularly in the Queen’s Apartments: a row of bedchambers, antechambers, and salons that stretched between the Peace drawing-room and the King’s guardroom on the upper storey of the palace’s southern wing. The King and the Duke had strolled up and down the length of those apartments once, twice, thrice, pausing before each of the high windows to enjoy the view across the Parterre Sud, and the Orangerie below it to the rise of the Bois de Satory a mile away. The duc d’Arcachon had, in the fullness of time, perceived what the King had wished him to perceive, which was that any buildings erected on or near the crest of the hill would spoil the Queen’s view, and give her the feeling that the de Lavardacs were peering down into her bedroom windows. And so a great pile of expensive architectural drawings had been used to start fires in the Hotel d’Arcachon in Paris, and the duc had hired the great Hardouin-Mansart and implored him to design a chateau altogether magnificent-but invisible from the Queen’s windows. Mansart had situated it well back from the crest of the hill. Consequently, from the windows of the chateau of La Dunette proper, the view was limited. But Mansart had laid out a promenade that swung out along a lobe of the garden and led to a gazebo, perched demurely on the brink of the hill, and camouflaged with climbing vines. From there the prospect was superb.