Marble Court
Beginning with Louis XIII, the royal bedchamber of every King who lived at Versailles looked out across the Marble Court, facing east toward Paris. Even before it was Versailles, when it was merely a glorified haymow for Louis XIII to romp in with his girlfriends, the King's Bedchamber was strategically positioned. Louis XV had a secret window installed through which he could see the world but the world couldn't see him; Louis XVI, in a rare farsighted moment, added a telescope.
The day's first sun falls across the black and white paving stones that give the court its name. Italian marble, luminous and fine-textured, ordered during the second building campaign by Louis Le Vau, who'd no sooner watched it set in place than he began to cough up blood and die. It was his idea to lay three new steps atop the existing two, preventing carriage access, to sink a pool in the center of the courtyard, and to position huge cast-iron birdcages in the corners, filled with disoriented birds from foreign lands who'd sing their exotic songs at all hours of the day and night. By the time Louis XV was lying dead in the royal bedchamber, the birdcages were gone and so was the pool, and it was once again possible to admire the perfection of Le Vau's black-and-white diaperwork pattern, especially if you shared the dead King's habit of wandering around on the roof after dark, conversing with your guests down the chimney flues.
The King is dead! Long live the King! Hours had elapsed since that cry rang through the chateau's rabbit warren of hallways, its last echoes still trapped in vast stone reservoirs far below the ground. The sun had reached the height of its arc and now was plummeting past the Lizard Fountains and into the Grand Canal, setting the windows of the Hall of Mirrors aflame and filling the Marble Court with the building's own shadow. Ordinary birds were singing, larks and warblers; most of the carriages ferrying the frightened courtiers from the house of pestilence had arrived at their destination, and everyone was letting out deep sighs of relief. Checking to make sure no unusual blemishes lurked under their face powder. Toasting their good fortune.
Meanwhile in the royal bedchamber there was work to be done.
"You must open the King's body and embalm it," said the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Chief Surgeon, who knew that to do so was to sign his own death warrant.
"I will if you'll help by holding his head," the Chief Surgeon craftily replied.
And so it happened that Louis XV's heart — unlike the heart of every other King of France before him — wasn't removed from his chest cavity and pickled in herbs and spices before being sent to one of the Paris churches, where it would be accorded the kind of adoration generally reserved for a piece of the true cross. No, Beloved was buried at Saint- Denis with all his organs intact, albeit liquescent, inside him.
Nor would his heart be among those royal hearts sold during the Revolution to a painter named Martin Drolling. It was said that Drolling pounded them into "mummy," and that they lent the pigment he used in painting L'Intérieur d'une Cuisine (a cozy view of peasants at work) unusual brilliance and luster.
Interior of a Kitchen
The back scullery, jive A.M. A door is partly open, stage rear, letting onto a still-dark alleyway from, which issues the muffled sound of furtive activity, cats or rats or God knows what.
It is the summer of 7774. Two scullery maids, bothwearing juice-stained white aprons over dirty gray dresses, stand at a large work table, pitting cherries. One of them (Brigitte) is old and fat, the moonlike roundness and whiteness of her head accented by her mobcap. The other (Françoise) is young and pretty, her pale face surrounded by masses of auburn curls. The floor at the women's feet is crowded with baskets of cherries waiting to be pitted.
The door swings all the way open; enter Jean-Claude, a skinny youth with a bad complexion, carrying another basket.
JEAN-CLAUDE: This should be the last of them. He puts the basket down, then leans against the wall so that he is facing Françoise, his arms crossed over his narrow chest. Next it will be apricots.
BRIGITTE: TOO early yet. Next will be currants.
FRANÇOISE: Same difference.
JEAN-CLAUDE: Not if you have to pick them.
Françoise pouts a little, showing off her pretty lower lip, then deepens her voice, imitating Jean-Claude.
FRANÇOISE: Not if you have to pick them. She removes her apron and tucks the stained bib between her legs. Who am I? Three guesses.
JEAN-CLAUDE: Give us a hint.
FRANÇOISE, examining the bib: Oh boohoo! Boohoo! Another month gone and once again the curse of Eve upon me!
BRIGITTE: That will do, Françoise.
JEAN-CLAUDE: I still don't get it.
FRANÇOISE, holding the bib inches from her big blue eyes; If I don't produce an heir soon, they'll have my head.
Jean-Claude raises his hands, palms up, and shrugs. He doesn't have a clue, and Brigitte, by the disgusted look on her full-moon face, makes it clear to the audience that the French, unlike the British, find the village idiot anything but charming.
Throughout the scene the open door way has been gradually filling with the rosy light of dawn. A large pile of refuse becomes visible — a shapeless jumble containing here and there vaguely recognizable objects, part of a rib cage maybe, a pelvis, a forearm and hand, possibly even a head. Recumbent on the pile, the hazy figure of Bread, as far in the distance the rising sun turns Versailles butter yellow and glints off the gold blades of the palace gate.
BREAD, singing:
Featherhead, featherhead
Unfucked in your featherbed
Twenty years and you'll be dead.
JEAN-CLAUDE: Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there?
FRANÇOISE, dismissively; Probably just a croquant, looking for a nice place to die. Monsieur (leaving the table and calling through the door), if you think you will find any featherbeds here you are barking up the wrong tree.
She exits stage rear, ostensibly to chase the offending party a way, and returns with a discarded leek from the refuse pile. I will give you one last chance. She stares intently at Jean-Claude, positioning the drooping vegetable at her crotch and deepening her voice. Try as I might, my insatiable sweetheart, I cannot manage to hit love's bull's-eye.
JEAN-CLAUDE, shocked, as light finally dawns: Oh. But that is blasphemy. They are our King and Queen. The King and Queen of France.
BREAD, singing:
The King is a lout and
The Queen is a whore
Make them ride in the carriage
With thirty-six doors.
Françoise ornaments her hair with the leek, as if it were a feather.
FRANÇOISE: Kiss me! Fill me with your royal broth! But wait. I forget myself. You'd rather be pounding the royal forge.
JEAN-CLAUDE: As a woman, you should be sad for her, rather than making fun.
FRANÇOISE, pulling a solemn face: I am sad for her. She is so beautiful and clever, and he is a gluttonous dullard.
BRIGITTE: Allow me to remind you that, clever or dull, they'll both have our hides if we don't get these cherries pitted. Not to mention that what they do behind the doors of the royal apartments is none of our business.