In the center aisle between the benches, the student linguists were gathering to welcome the ambassadors in twenty-four languages. Their scholars’ gowns had been brushed, their hair was unnaturally neat, and their hands had been scrubbed. The inseparable pair of twelve-year-old Chinese boys stood a little apart, black eyes flashing as they talked excitedly and pointed at the red-draped windows. Père Montville, the ceremony’s director, burst out of the main building, slammed the door behind him, and was nearly flattened as an allegorical emblem the size of a small table crashed to the ground.
“Help!” he yelled to the lay brothers. “You have ten minutes to get that back in place.” He rolled his eyes at Charles, who had come running. “We’ll get through it. We always do. And tomorrow we’ll be looking forward to next year. That’s because we’re insane, and you seem to fit right in, Maître. Bonne chance this afternoon!”
The clock chimed a quarter past twelve.
“Ah, mon Dieu,” Montville implored, casting his eyes up at the canvas awning. He bore down on the linguists. “Form up in your line and stay there!”
He hurtled back through the rear door, Charles on his heels. When they reached the grand salon, Montville made his way through the crowd of excited Jesuits to stand on the rector’s left, under the archway between the salon and the antechamber. The king’s confessor, Père La Chaise, stood on the rector’s other side. Charles slid along the salon wall and worked his way to a vantage point behind La Chaise’s right shoulder. A strip of thick carpet patterned in red and gold ran from the rector’s feet across the antechamber’s patterned stone floor to the street doors. The college’s most noble students, dressed in satin and lace under their scholar’s gowns, were ranged along both sides of the carpet, fidgeting and whispering. The five boys nearest the double doors—the natural son of the late Charles II of England, and the sons of the Grand Générals of Poland and Lithuania—had lent their personal carriages to bring the Siamese from Berny, two leagues south of Paris, and would escort the ambassadors into the college. Le Picart clapped his hands to call everyone’s attention.
“Remember,” he said sternly, “this visit is supposed to be incognito, since the ambassadors have not yet made their formal entry into the city. We do not want to draw a crowd, so you must get them out of the carriages and inside as quickly as courtesy allows. Do not let them stand in the street and look at everything. The music should help to draw them. I hope.”
The muted sound of slowing horses and carriage wheels drew all eyes to the doors. The boys stood like statues, in perfect fourth positions. Le Picart signaled the trumpeters hidden in a side alcove and a deafening processional made Charles flinch. Two lay brothers opened the great double doors. Charles II’s son, eleven-year-old Charles Lennox, swept through them and opened the door of the first carriage, which had his coat of arms blazoned on it. He bowed deeply as the chief ambassador, Kosa Pan, descended from the carriage. The ambassador was resplendent in a long-sleeved tunic, curiously draped breeches, and a tall, narrow hat with a small brim, all of heavy gold silk covered with intricate gold stitching. His brilliant black eyes darted everywhere with lively curiosity, but he meekly allowed young Lennox to lead him inside. His two attendant Siamese nobles and M. Torf, a Frenchman who had accompanied the entourage from Siam, followed them. Kosa Pan bowed to Le Picart and the attendant nobles knelt with their noses in the carpet and their silk-clad rumps in the air. Before the desperately straight-faced students could give way to giggles, a new trumpet blast announced the next carriage.
In spite of Lennox’s efficiency with Kosa Pan, an excited crowd was gathering in the street. Elbowing each other, they watched the other two ambassadors, a glum elderly man in blue silk embroidered with gold flowers and a young man in green silk and a fur-trimmed hat, alight from the carriages. As the last of the entourage trailed through the college doors, there was a pause in the music and a child’s piercing treble voice rose from the crowd.
“Maman, they are just like monkeys!”
The great double doors swung shut. Charles hoped the Siamese didn’t have enough French to understand the remark, but Kosa Pan’s dancing eyes and brief snort of tolerant laughter told him otherwise. As the ambassadors’ servants began laying brocade-wrapped gifts at the rector’s feet, Charles faded back along the salon wall and retreated to the courtyard.
Half the linguists had abandoned their line and most had their gowns nearly off their shoulders. Charles chivvied them back into order just as Montville and two of the trumpeters emerged into the court and placed themselves below the red-draped upper windows, facing the long line of students. A blasting fanfare from the third-floor salon, answered by the courtyard trumpeters, signaled that the ambassadors had reached their red armchairs. The first linguist stepped smoothly forward. He bowed to the open windows, delivered greetings in French, bowed again, and exited around the outside of the benches. The second boy welcomed the guests in Siamese, and if his pronunciation made the ambassadorial mouths quiver, it also brought wide, appreciative smiles for the effort. Twenty more languages followed and finally the Chinese boys advanced, red silk flashing under their gowns. They delivered a brief antiphonal Chinese oration, expressing the college’s joy in welcoming honored Mandarins from the East.
They withdrew and a longer fanfare announced Père La Chaise, escorting the king’s German sister-in-law Liselotte, Madame, as she was styled by her royal title. She and her bevy of ladies acknowledged the ambassadors, who rose and bowed in return. Then Madame was shown to the middle chair of three upholstered in blue cut velvet, set between the benches and the stage. As she arranged her billowing lemon satin skirts around her, Père La Chaise sat down on her right. Her ladies claimed the first bench, their white linen headdresses, called fontanges, standing up on their ringleted heads like half-folded fans.
The other benches began to fill, as the boarding students not in the performance took their places. Charles saw Père Montville showing the Mercure editor to a good place near the front, and Beauchamps and the musicians emerged from the senior refectory, their tiring room, and arranged their music on stands. The mothers, aunts, and sisters of the students filled the windows, their jewels and gowns gleaming even in the subdued light, and their men, equally dazzling, flowed into the courtyard. Members of religious orders began arriving in a flood of black, brown, and white: Augustinians, Cordeliers, Carmelites, Jacobins, and Celestines.
With a last look at his audience, Charles slipped through the door to the understage, where Pernelle, cheeks flushed with excitement, stood beside her assigned gear wheel. The flirtatious Frère Moulin was still not in evidence, and the other brothers were too busy to pay her any attention. Charles smiled at her and went up through the trap and through the rhetoric classroom windows into a simmer of anticipation. Pale under their makeup, boys were dressing, muttering lines, practicing steps, and discovering that, once dressed, their churning insides needed the latrine. Père Jouvancy, calm and eagle-eyed, was everywhere at once. The clock chimed the quarter before one, preliminary music began in the courtyard, and a hush descended on the classroom.
“A good time to pray, messieurs,” Jouvancy said to the students happily. “Keep your headdresses on, God will understand.”