Farewell, My Queen

the Revolution. But also very near, probably because life in that place bore no resemblance to anything else. Time at Versailles was purely ceremonial; it was spent differently, marked off by curious signposts. Its real divisions were not calculated in terms of years, or months, or even weeks, but in terms of days. There was a Perfect Day; its program had been set more than a century earlier by Louis XIV: Prayers, Petty Levee, Grand Levee, Mass, Dinner, Hunt, Vespers, Supper, Grand Couchee, Petty Couchee, Prayers, Petty Levee, Grand Levee . . . Each day since that time was supposed to reenact the Perfect Day. Life at Versailles was a succession of identical days. Such at any rate was the Rule, from an absolute standpoint. But reality never ceased to throw up obstacles. The reenactment was never completely successful. We were doomed to wither and decline. Life at Versailles could only degenerate . . .Tiny modifications became snags, reforms became upheavals, and so on, leading down to the days in July of 1789 that saw the King capitulate and the Court disperse—the collapse, in less than a week, of a ritual system that I had assumed was fixed for all time. In any case, that first view of the Queen, which no painting or sculpture of a goddess has subsequently dimmed, had entrenched me from the outset in a timeless world. Life at Versailles was a succession of like days. That was the Rule, and I believed in it.
But I was not the only one to be thus obsessed. When people said the Court, they meant the Court of Versailles. Ours was the model par excellence, toward which the eyes of every capital city, Saint Petersburg, Rome, London, Madrid, Warsaw, Vienna, and the rest, were turned. People were not unaware that despite ruinous attempts to drain the swamps, the château of Versailles had been built on an unwholesome site, and unwholesome it remained. People were not unaware of the epidemics and fevers, and the tremendous stench, which in warm weather spread through all the rooms. “The perfectly natural result of exudation from the commodes”; so the casual visitor, on the verge of feeling ill, would be informed. And the women would prettily shake their heads like a goat trying to shake free of its tether. To drive away the fetid smell, they would wave their fans a little faster. Exudation indeed! . . . People choked! And it was terrifying to behold, against the white skin of some fashionable lady, the blisters dotted across her neck by insect bites.
Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV, would swallow spiders that had fallen into her bowl of chocolate.
Marie Leszczyńska, wife of Louis XV, besieged by mice, would utter cries of distress. And in the early days of their marriage, the Queen’s little cries (from her perch on an armchair whence she refused to come down) charmed Louis XV. . . till the day he wearied of poor Marie and her fears, saying with a shrug: “I keep telling you, Madam, that nothing can be done.”
Marie-Antoinette had a particular aversion to fleas and bedbugs. With the help of chemicals sent at her request from Vienna in boxes she treated as so many treasure chests, she had launched a systematic campaign. Her abhorrence of fleas was simply regarded as another of those peculiarities to be expected from a foreigner, along with her odd habit of washing before applying makeup . . .
All this we bore without a word: the stings and bites, the pimples and sickly humors, the strange swellings and suspicious growths. We endured without complaining the numerous bodily discomforts, including—I found this specially repellent (but it left most of the courtiers quite unmoved)—an unimaginable swarming of rats, for there was food left lying about more or less everywhere in the apartments, food that had fallen under the furniture, that had been forgotten between the sheets or quite simply left to spoil in the food closets or in the warming ovens that were installed in window nooks, on landings, and under staircases. The rats thought Versailles was wonderful. By night they conducted a witches’ sabbat there, taking complete control in some of the living quarters, where floor and furniture were reduced to ruin . . .We might also have complained of finding it difficult to breathe, outdoors because of exhalations from what remained of the swamps, indoors because of the crowds squeezed into spaces that were too small. And if ever there was a place where one might die asphyxiated, it was the château of Versailles. Yet none of these evils had any importance for us, nor for the rest of the world. Our position was envied, for we were at Versailles.
Versailles, where Fortune reigned and where at a word from a minister, or from a courtier who had the ear of those in power, your fate might alter totally from one day to the next. For the better, as well as for the worse.
Where the best tone prevailed, and men bowed themselves out of a chamber with greater style than anywhere else.
Where Fashion was decided. Never mind that sometimes you wore lace chewed by the mice; the cunning little creatures sometimes invented new stitches.
Where, even in the least frequented sections of the park, at the farthest end of an avenue, at the entrance to an area of woods, some small detail of great beauty might always appear: the equivocal beckoning of a statue, the goblet of fruit and flowers carved into the stone and set against the sky.
Where, above all, there dwelt the Queen.
And on certain mornings, in the half consciousness that precedes waking, when I can let the state of pleasant confusion persist awhile, I make believe I am still back there. I imagine my fingers are touching the wall of the room I had there, that I am turning over in my bed, that once again I feel my hair lying in thick abundance against my pillow, and I tell myself