“I think that’s charming,” said Marie.
As he guided them out of the Queen’s Apartment, Roland announced that he would show them the chapel, which lay across the courtyard. As they walked across the courtyard, Marie turned to him.
“I was interested by the story you just told us,” she said quietly. “I always supposed it would be very difficult to have a happy marriage when there is a great difference between the husband and wife.”
“A difference of age, you mean?”
“Of age. Or other things.”
A delicate question, he thought, but sensible. She was right to raise it. After all, he was an aristocrat, and she, though rich, was a woman of the bourgeoisie. Such a difference in traditional France was still huge.
“I think that if there is affection, mademoiselle, and mutual respect, and if people have interests in common, then the differences can be solved as long as both parties make compromises. And compromise comes from affection.”
She nodded thoughtfully. Then she smiled.
“What you say seems very wise, monsieur.”
The chapel was a baroque masterpiece, dedicated to the medieval king Saint Louis.
“In the latter part of his reign,” Roland remarked, “the Sun King became increasingly religious.”
“And this was entirely thanks to his second wife, Madame de Maintenon,” Marie added cheerfully, “who was a good moral influence on him.”
Roland laughed.
“She’s quite right, of course,” he told Fox and Hadley. “No doubt every man needs a wife to give him moral guidance. But Louis XIV certainly did!”
Fox, however, did not seem to share their amusement. He nodded thoughtfully, but pursed his lips.
“You must forgive me if I can’t be so enthusiastic about the religious feelings of Louis XIV. It was those feelings that made him kick my family out of France.”
Roland looked at him in surprise.
“You’re a Huguenot?”
“We were.” Fox turned to Hadley to explain. “You’ve probably heard of the Huguenots, as the French Protestants were often called. We lived in France protected by an act of toleration known as the Edict of Nantes. But then in 1685, Louis XIV revoked that protection and told the Huguenots to convert. About two hundred thousand escaped, many of them going to England. My family was one of those.”
“But you haven’t got a French name,” Marie said.
“No. Some of the English Huguenots kept their French names. But others translated them into English. A family called Le Brun, for instance, became Brown. And Renard translated to Fox.”
“Your name was Renard?” said Roland with sudden interest.
“Yes. It’s quite a common name.”
Roland looked thoughtful for a moment. He knew that his family had married a Renard heiress once, a woman of the merchant class—a girl like Marie Blanchard, perhaps. That had been centuries ago, hardly worth thinking about. But it was conceivable that his family could be distantly linked to that of the English lawyer. Did he wish to investigate further? No, he didn’t want to be related to Fox.
“It’s true,” he agreed, “there are many Renards.” And he let the matter drop. “But now,” he announced, “the carriage will take us down to the end of the park where we can look at the charming little ensemble of the Trianons.”
Anyone who knew James Fox would have said that, when he decided to marry, his choice of wife would be wise, and that he’d make an excellent husband. He’d already been a little in love with several women, and recently he’d wondered if it might be time to settle down.
But he’d never experienced the thunderclap of a grand passion, the coup de foudre. Until last Sunday.
And now he was in love. And his love was impossible.
He’d always assumed he’d need a wife who spoke French. The family firm had begun in London, but the Paris office was an important part of the business. He and his father were liked and trusted by the British embassy, and he expected that he’d be moving between the London and Paris offices for the rest of his professional life.
Finding an English wife who spoke French should not be too difficult. Ever since the might and prestige of the Sun King had made French the language of diplomacy, it had been de rigueur for ladies of the upper and upper-middle classes to speak French—at least in theory. Indeed, most middle-class girls would learn a smattering of French at school.
But what about a French wife? The idea was quite appealing. In France, it could only help. And in London, so long as she could speak passable English, it would be thought rather elegant.
Either way, James Fox might hope to marry well. True, from the point of view of an English bride, his position as a solicitor lacked the social cachet of the barrister who appeared in court. But the Paris connection, the fact that James and his father were invited to embassy receptions and had dealings with the aristocratic world of diplomacy, added to his status. A young woman who hoped to marry a diplomat might settle for a life in glamorous Paris with a professional man of solid family fortune. With the French, his position was even better. The British Empire was at its zenith; it had a monarchy, which many French secretly craved; and the British pound sterling bought a great many French francs. Less aware of minor English social distinctions, the French saw only a prosperous English gentleman. Even a rich family like the Blanchards might have considered him.
Except, of course, that he was Protestant.
Every week he attended St. George’s Anglican Church near the Arc de Triomphe, or sometimes the nearby American church of the Holy Trinity, just south of the Champs-Élysées, where the cousin of J. P. Morgan the banker had been rector for decades. Some of the Foxes’ French friends were Protestant, but the majority, naturally, were Catholic. As his father had told him since his early childhood: “Many of our dearest friends are Catholic, James. But although there’s no need to talk about it, always remember that you are a Protestant.”
So on Sunday, when James had found himself staring at the fair curls and blue eyes of Marie Blanchard, and known, instantly and irrevocably, that this was the woman he wanted to marry, he had also realized that it was madness.
Monsieur Blanchard would almost certainly forbid it. His own father would not take kindly to the idea at all. There would be the inevitable wrangle about the children’s religion. As a lawyer he knew only too well how even the nicest families could be broken apart, wills altered and worse, the moment one crossed the religious divide.
And besides even that, it was very clear that there might be an offer from de Cygne, a rich aristocrat of impeccable religion.
He was wasting his time even thinking about Marie.
But James Fox was a patient man. He didn’t give up easily.
The Trianon where the Sun King would retreat with Madame de Maintenon from the formality of his court was a charming country house built of stone and pink marble. The nearby Petit Trianon of his successor Louis XV was a doll’s house by comparison.
“This is where we are reminded that the Bourbons were humans after all, and not gods,” Roland remarked. “And also that they were vulnerable. For this tiny palace of the Petit Trianon became the favorite retreat of poor Queen Marie Antoinette in the years before the Revolution.
“And now, my friends, if you will permit me, I will offer you this reflection upon the meaning of Versailles. Consider first: It was almost entirely built by Louis XIV with additions by his successor Louis XV, in variations of the classical style. Architecturally, it has unity. Second, let us remember an astonishing fact of French history. The Sun King lived so long that he saw his son and grandson die before him. As a result, it was his great-grandson, a little child, who succeeded him. From 1643 until 1774—over a hundred and thirty years—France was ruled by only those two kings, Louis XIV and XV. Add the quarter century of the next reign—that of Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette—and you are at the French Revolution. From the seventeenth century until the Revolution, with very little interruption, France i
s ruled not from Paris, but from the court of Versailles.
“But now let me tell you why, for me, Versailles has a certain melancholy. Think of the Sun King, so anxious to bring order to France, aided by the Catholic Church, which is fighting back with all its baroque power against the Protestant Reformation. He seems to succeed, he makes France the greatest power in Europe. But he overreaches himself, becomes involved in ruinous wars, sees his family die and instead of a secure succession, leaves a half-ruined kingdom to another child, just as he was. Imagine what his grief must have been.
“The new century sees a gilded age, and the Enlightenment, to be sure. But also financial difficulties, the loss of France’s colonies in Canada and India to the British, and ends with the Revolution, when the Paris mob forces poor Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to return to Paris, and the guillotine. With this, the age of Versailles comes to an end. Everything its builder had hoped for has been utterly destroyed.
“Yet perhaps that is why Versailles is so haunting. It is an entire world that suddenly ended, and remains in all its perfection, frozen forever, just as it was when they dragged the king and queen away to their deaths.”
There was one last site to visit. It was quite close by. While Roland walked ahead with Marie and her brother, Fox followed with Hadley.
Fox liked this intelligent American friend of Marie’s brother. They chatted briefly about their visit. “De Cygne’s an excellent guide,” said Fox.
“Yes.” Hadley gazed at the three people ahead of them. “They make a handsome couple, our aristocrat and Marie, don’t you think? Blond, blue-eyed … He’d be quite a catch for her, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose so,” said Fox calmly. “Has he made any declaration?”
“Not yet. Marc would have told me, I’m sure.”
“What about Marc?” Fox inquired. He asked partly to make conversation, and partly because, if he was going to have any chance in his hopeless quest for Marie, he’d better discover everything he could about the family.
Hadley chuckled.
“Not exactly. My friend’s in a rather different kind of trouble.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you keep secrets?”
“Every day of my professional life.”
“Well, Marc’s got himself in a bit of trouble with a girl. Hardly uncommon. But his father’s so angry he’s cut off his allowance.” And he gave Fox a brief account of the circumstances.
“It’s unfortunate, but hardly a scandal,” Fox remarked when Hadley had finished. “As a lawyer, I see something similar almost every week.”
“It’s the choice of family, I think. Marc’s father feels bad about that. And that the girl’s family are going to throw her out. Blanchard feels responsible for her.”
“I commend him for it. Plenty of rich men wouldn’t. Have they made any plans for the girl, and the baby, assuming it’s born?”
“Not yet.”
Fox was thoughtful. It might be that Hadley had just told him something rather useful.
And now they had come to the one little corner, among all the huge palaces and formal spaces of Versailles, that was completely eccentric.
“Voilà!” cried de Cygne. “The Hamlet.”
Marc had heard of the artificial village where Queen Marie Antoinette liked to dress up in a simple muslin dress and a straw hat and play at being a peasant woman. With its mill, and dairy and dovecote, the little hamlet was her private domain where no one could enter without permission.
“It was just a toy village to amuse a poor little rich girl, wasn’t it?” he said.
“History is not fair to Marie Antoinette,” Roland replied. “In fact the hamlet—it’s a model Norman village in fact—really functioned and provided food for Versailles. Plenty of people dream of a private retreat, especially if they’re trapped in a formal world like the court of Versailles. It’s got a rustic charm. But it wasn’t built until 1783. She hardly had six years in which to enjoy it before the Revolution brought her life to an end.”
It was certainly a charming spot to walk around. Hadley and Marc had strolled to one side with James Fox, so Roland took his chance to question Marie a little further. He asked her if she had enjoyed the visit, and she said she had.
“I could see that you’re well acquainted with the history of Versailles. I hope my commentary for our friend Hadley didn’t bore you.”
“Not at all. I enjoy historical places and family stories. But I really don’t know so much.” She smiled. “My aunt Éloïse says I should read more.”
“There is no need,” he said firmly. “But what do you enjoy doing?”
“The usual things in the city. We go to the opera. I have asked Marc to take me to the Folies-Bergère, but he hasn’t yet. I think my parents may have brought me up too strictly.”
Roland smiled. It was a charming little flirtation.
“Your parents are quite right. I go to the Folies-Bergère myself, however.” Would he take his wife to the Folies-Bergère? He could imagine Marie persuading him to do it, and the thought was quite delightful. His bride, of course, must be pure. But from all he had seen today, he felt sure that when her husband taught her the ways of love, this demure and charming young woman would be an eager pupil.
“You spend time in the country as well?”
“We have a house in Fontainebleau. I go riding in the forest there.”
“You like to ride?”
“I enjoy it, but I only ride occasionally. I should like to ride well.”
“It takes a little hard work.”
“I don’t believe one can do anything well if one isn’t prepared to work at it, monsieur.”
“This is true.”
“But apart from this, monsieur, my relationship with the countryside is too like that of Marie Antoinette at the Hamlet. I only play at it.” She paused. “We do own a vineyard that my father bought, however, where I always go down for the harvest. I work with the women picking the grapes. It’s not very elegant, but I love to do it. I think perhaps I am happiest at the vineyard.”
Ah, thought Roland, she was not just a rich bourgeoise, then. She had a feel for the land. An aristocrat should be elegant in Paris, but know how to run an estate. He thought he could see Marie learning these dual roles.
The four men wanted to take a brief turn in the ornamental gardens before they left. It was only a short walk to the Grand Canal in the center of the park, and Roland led the way. As they reached the Grand Canal, he let them wander about, and for the first time since their arrival he found himself momentarily alone and able to observe them.
The January afternoon would be closing in soon. The clouds were so high that it seemed they had scarcely moved at all since the place was built. The Grand Canal ran down the center of the lower gardens. Louis XIV and his court liked to gather there for boating parties. But the canal was empty now, gray as the sky. Only Marie and her brother, Fox and Hadley stood like shadowless statues by the stony water’s edge, and all around them the vast formal terraces, geometric gardens, the endless parterres and distant fountains—all empty, all silent.
And it came to him with great force that if he married Marie, he would be bringing into his life a warmth and comfort that was not to be found in these huge, echoing spaces where the hand of man clipped hedges with geometric precision, and the eye of God, hidden behind the gray-ribbed clouds, saw all and judged all, against the pattern of His greater and still more fearful symmetry.
The life of the French aristocrat was full of ghosts—of kings, and ancestors and great events all moving about like shadows in an echoing garden. Like all ghosts, they were strangely cold, and the possession of them set him apart in ways he could scarcely explain himself, and which Marie Blanchard would neither share nor probably wish to share. She would bring him the warmth he needed. But could he tolerate that warmth? And would she tolerate the cold ghosts that he must also live with? He did not know.
To his surprise, he suddenly had a great de
sire to ask his father what he thought. He’d talk to him as soon as possible.
It was ten days later that Jules Blanchard was surprised to receive a visit from James Fox, who asked if he might speak to him alone.
Sitting down in his little library, the polite Englishman opened the conversation carefully.
“In our work between London and Paris, monsieur,” he began, “we often find ourselves asked for advice on family matters of all kinds. And we are always glad to be helpful whenever we can. Some of these are private matters requiring discretion. Others are relatively simple.” He paused only briefly. “At the moment,” he continued, “I have two clients in England who have asked for help. One is a very straightforward matter. There is a nice, respectable family in London who would like to find a nanny for their children. They want the children to grow up speaking French and so they are looking for a Frenchwoman to act as nanny and governess until the children go to school. You have such a huge acquaintance that I thought I would ask if you might know of anyone.”
“I’m not sure,” said Blanchard. “I can ask my wife. What’s the other matter?”
“The second is much more private, and requires discretion. But having had dealings with you, and having the pleasure of meeting your family, monsieur, I feel I may confide in you—with your permission.”
“Certainly.”
“This concerns a family who live outside London, clients of our firm for two generations now. Sadly, after some years, this couple have been unable to have children, and they want to adopt a child. They do not mind whether it is a boy or a girl. It’s easy enough, of course, to obtain a child from one of the many orphanages, but they would like to find a baby whose parentage is known, and one who is likely to be able to benefit from what they have to offer. And that is a great deal. The father is a banker, and the mother, whose own father was a professor, is a lady of considerable artistic talent. Our London office has no suggestions at present, but asked me if I could help. Unfortunately, I don’t myself know of anybody who might have an appropriate baby needing parents. But given your huge acquaintance, I thought I’d ask if you might discreetly let this be known on the grapevine.” He spread his hands. “Whoever their adopted child finally is, he or she will be fortunate. They live in the most pleasant circumstances.”