The Song of the Siren

It was not my good fortune to meet Louis XIV, the Sun King, until he had passed into the last phase of his life. He was an old man then and had been married for some twenty years to the pious Madame de Maintenon and was more concerned with the glories of heaven than of earth. He must have been about sixty-seven years old then and in that case he could have been on the throne for sixty-two years. He was indeed the Grand Monarque.

He was all that one would expect of a king and a King of France at that. Protocol was far more rigid at the court of France than ever it was in England. One little slip and a man could lose all hope of favour. I remarked that the life of the courtier must be a very hazardous one.

Hessenfield had primed me again and again on what I must do. He was perfectly at ease and like all friends of James received graciously by the King of France, for there was no doubt that at this time Louis must have been growing very anxious on account of Marlborough’s persistent victories.

I was to be presented at the most magnificent palace in Europe Louis’s own creation, equalling him in splendour: Versailles.

I had a special gown for the occasion. Madame Panton had been beside herself with excitement. She had fussed and chattered, gesticulated, despaired and rejoiced, and once or twice came near to fainting because she thought the cut or flare in my voluminous skirt was not what she called quite true.

But at last I was ready-splendid in diaphanous blue and discreetly scintillating with jewels, for as Hessenfield said, Louis’s susceptibilities must not be offended and he had been influenced by Madame de Maintenon for twenty years and she had subdued his tastes considerably.

“At one time,” said Hessenfield, “I should have been afraid to show you to him. He will admire your beauty. He is a lover of beauty in all things but now of course Madame de Maintenon has persuaded him that beauty lies in heaven not on earth. In any case he is an old man now. I wonder if I shall be pious when I grow old?”

“Many people become so,” I reminded him. “And the more sinful they have been the more vigorously they must wash away their sins. You will need to be very pious.”

“You too?” he asked.

“As vigorous as you, I fear.”

“We will scrub together, sweetheart,” he said. “In the meantime let as think of your presentation to the Setting Sun.”

Versailles! How beautiful it was. How impressive! I had never seen anything like it, nor have I since. We rode out in the carriage. It was some eleven miles or so from Paris. There was little that was memorable about the town itself. Perhaps that was why Louis had decided to build this most magnificent of all palaces there so that the contrast might be more striking. We drove past the cathedral of St. Louis and the church of Notre Dame in the quarter of Satory and swept round to the west where a gilded iron gate and stone balustrade shut off the main palace from the Place D’Armes.

I gazed at the allegorical groups on either side and the statues of France’s great statesmen and the enormous one of Louis himself on horseback. It was a most overwhelming sight. To the right and the left were the long wings of the palace, and as breathtaking as the palace itself were those magnificent gardens which had been laid out by Le Notre-the flowers, the ornamental basins, the groups and statues, the great avenue, the mighty trees and the green grass of the Tapis Vert.

Hessenfield said: “Come on. Don’t gape like a country woman. The best view is from one of the windows of the Galerie des Glaces.”

Faced with so many glories it is difficult to remember them all. I came away from Versailles with a jumbled memory of wide staircases, of rooms each more elaborate than the last, of pictures, sculptures, tapestries-a storehouse of treasure, a setting suited to the King who believed himself far above ordinary mortals, a god. The king of the sun.

It was not to be expected that we should be received here as we had been at St. Germain-en-Laye.

This was a very different court from that of the exile who was perhaps tolerated here largely because the Queen he wished to replace was the greatest enemy of the Sun King himself. It was the English and the Duke of Marlborough who were giving Louis cause for concern such as he had rarely known before. It was unthinkable that he should be forced to sue for peace and it seemed that was what Marlborough was attempting to force him to do. Therefore any who could cause the smallest trouble to the enemy was welcome and to be helped. So Jacobites were most graciously received at Versailles.