"Well," I could not help provoking him, "you regret so much what happened, yet were matters not as they now stand, France would have no claim to the the Spanish throne."
The Abbot was cut to the quick.
"There is no contradiction whatever," said he, rising to his full height. "The past is the past and can be altered only in our imagination, as happened at the Vessel. We can only so arrange matters that past events should not have been in vain."
"What do you mean?"
"If His Majesty's separation from Maria Mancini were now to bring Bourbon blood to the throne of Spain," Atto declaimed pompously, waving his index finger as he spoke, "their suffering, from the blind and pointless torment of forty years ago, would be sublimated into a supreme sacrifice for the good of the royal household of France and, plainly, to the greater glory of God from whom the monarch's power emanates."
At first, I found it difficult to grasp what he was getting at in that obscure oratorical display. One thing, however, was perfectly clear to me: for the first time since his arrival at Villa Spada, Atto was talking with me of the succession to the Spanish throne.
"Only thus will they not have been separated in vain," he added.
The war in Flanders, for example, Melani continued, could only have been undertaken by the Most Christian King in his capacity as consort of Maria Teresa, seeing that the purpose of that conflict was to claim his wife's dowry from the Spaniards.
"In other words, then as now, the Most Christian King has been determined to extort, if needs be by violence, all that he could lay his hands on which might serve to avenge him of the violence which he himself once suffered. The violence of which I spoke to you: once suffered, then inflicted upon others, do you remember?" the Abbot reminded me.
"Yes, from what you've told me, I know that his favourite ways of getting his own back have been through women and wars."
"Queens and raison d'Etat. the very things which once separated him from Maria Mancini forever."
That was why, Atto continued in a hoarse voice, Louis XIV never held back whenever there was any opportunity to make women suffer; even better if he could mix the matter up with politics, as in the case of the Princess Palatine and the Grande Dauphine.
"These were two women whom the King admired greatly. They were not fragile and forever sighing like Louise de la Val- liere or social climbers like Athenai's de Montespan. Worse, they were independent spirits, fighting for their ideals with all their strength, just as he himself had once tried to do against his mother and his godfather."
Louis identified no little with those two rather masculine and idealistic young women. But he, in his own time, had lost his battle; and now he could not allow them to win theirs. The King was unhappy: at court, none could allow themselves the luxury of being happy, or even serene. The King was small of stature: none dared wear heels or more imposing periwigs that would make them taller than he.
"The King is small? But you told me that he was tall and good looking, and…"
"What does that matter? I told you what they all say and always will say and what will always be depicted in court portraits. Besides, with those red heels and those towering wigs, I challenge you to find a single monarch in Europe taller than he. The Most Christian King, my boy — and this is really in confidence between the two of us — when he takes off his shoes and that false hair, is not very much taller than you."
They brought us a dish with two pairs of roast francolins accompanied by green beans, artichokes and sour fruit, with wine and little flat breads with sesame. Atto started with the greens, while I immediately got my teeth into the francolins' breasts.
So, heaven help anyone whom the King found to be at peace for too long, even if this were out of resignation. And such was the character of the Princess Palatine (so called, because she came from the Palatinate): young, ugly and perfectly aware of the fact, the King's German sister-in-law was the second wife of Monsieur, in other words, his younger brother Philippe, and, unlike his first wife, the restless and unlucky Henrietta of England, she had been able to find a peaceful modus vivendi with that strange husband of hers. He did not like women, but she was sufficiently masculine not to disgust him. And, with the miraculous help of some holy image in the right place at the right time, he had even managed to make her pregnant and thus to provide the male heir his luckless late wife had been unable to conceive. Thereafter, the couple separated their beds by common accord and to their mutual satisfaction, united only by their love for their children. Madame Palatine's serene resignation was, however, to be shortlived.
"The dirty trick that was played on her, a little over ten years ago, was one of the most horrendous crimes of French military history," Atto stated, without mincing his words, by now engrossed in his tale. "The methodical and ferocious sacking of her land, the Palatinate, and of the castle of her birth, perpetrated in her name but without her consent. This was a masterpiece of devilish perfidy."
As he had once done with Maria Teresa and her supposed right to receive Spanish Flanders as part of her dowry, Louis claimed the Palatinate on behalf of his sister-in-law and against her will. She begged him desperately for an audience, but he would not receive her. Meanwhile, he ordered the French troops to conduct a scorched-earth campaign, but in the towns rather than the countryside, where that had previously been military practice. Thus, instead of a few scattered peasants' hutments, he had whole cities razed to the ground: Mannheim, and especially Heidelberg, where the magnificent pink sandstone castle was thrown into the waters of the Neckar.
"Years have passed since then, but the thing was so unheard-of that the French officers who took part in the campaign are still ashamed of it. It is only thanks to the spontaneous compassion of the Marechal de Tesse that, at the very last moment, when the fires were already burning, the gallery of the princess's family portraits was saved, in an effort to mitigate the desperation which he knew would overcome her when she heard of the disaster."
In vain did Louis' confessor whisper such expressions as "love for one's neighbour" in his ear, in the shadow of the confessionaclass="underline" the King would rise angrily, muttering "Chimaeras!" and shrugging his shoulders, before brusquely turning his back upon the father confessor without so much as a farewell.
On the contrary, the King continued in the same vein quite unperturbed. He inflicted the same torments upon the other German in his family: the Grand Dauphine, his daughter-in-law.
"She had it in her to become a queen one day, the real queen whom France had so long lacked. She had both the qualities and talents which could one day have enabled her to bear the weight of government. I still remember the King's admiring stare whenever she spoke."
Quite by surprise, however, Louis XIV told her that she was no longer to be informed of matters pertaining to government and, shortly after that, he did not disdain to enter into conflict with the Grand Dauphine's native land, Bavaria, rejecting with subtle pleasure every one of the young woman's attempts at mediation. For her, this was the end. Melancholy undermined her spirit and pervaded her whole body: from the waist downwards, it swelled up and within a few days she died amidst convulsions.
"This was a nemesis for the kingdom," moaned Abbot Melani. "With the death of the Grand Dauphine, France was left without the figure of a queen: no longer was there a queen mother or a reigning queen, nor was there a dauphine. The past, present and future of the royal family are the sphere of women and the force behind this destruction was in great part the King himself. Nor does he show any sign of regretting what he has done. Indeed, by marrying Madame de Maintenon, not only has he removed any possibility of seeing a new sovereign on the throne, but he has even gone so far as to exhort the Dauphin, now a widower too, to marry an old mistress of his, an actress," said Atto, listlessly fishing in his plate for a few scraps of artichoke.