Before Versailles Read Online Free PDF

irregular, like a starfish with arms lopped off and new growth meandering off the nubs. But it had been decorated by the finest Italian and then French artists of the Renaissance, who had made it everywhere pleasing and often splendid.
    One of its allures was that it sat in the forest. French kings and queens were passionate hunters—Louis was no exception—and forest encircled the palace and could be seen from turrets or second-floor balconies. There was a bit of a village nestled to one side, there to serve the palace and house courtiers, but one good gallop past clearings and outcroppings of rocks and boulders, and a man pulled the reins short to breathe in nature’s leafy, verdant, abundant aroma, while his eyes rested on stands of trees as ancient as the kingdom itself. In the summer the sky usually spread azure hues above majestic branches.
    This May morning, that sky was clear of clouds and promised yet another beautiful day. Watching his majesty duel, courtiers who were ranged up and down the famous outside staircase, steep, severe, straight-ramped. They lounged, these friends and members of Louis’s household, at their ease, as if it were their birthright—and it was—to observe majesty. Some leaned over the stone balustrade of the staircase; some sat on its dangerous downward angle. They were deliberate and daring, full of jokes and humor, quick to spot and mock any flaw in accepted behavior, equally as quick to compliment and copy exceptional grace. High-spirited, polished, witty, they were dashing and devil-may-care and dangerous.
    Philippe walked up stairs to stand beside his best friend and watch the next duel, and, as was his habit, to talk.
    “Did you see that? Can you believe it? I won. I outlasted him. He didn’t think I would. He was counting on my tiring out. Ha. I have you to thank. And I do.” It was seldom that Philippe bested Louis at anything.
    His friend, the son of a marshall of France—a marshall being one of the great officers of the crown, a distinct and unique honor—had been tutoring him, dueling with him every afternoon, forcing Philippe to sharpen his mind and his body, lecturing him all the while. You give up too easily. You’re stronger than you realize. You need to force the issue about the rest of your inheritance. You need to insist you be given a place on his council. It’s your right as a prince of France. Yes, lecturing him both about dueling and about the skill required to be a presence at court. Philippe was many things, lively, gregarious, generous, laughing, a raconteur; but he’d been overshadowed by Louis all his life, and this friend was determined he should be honored as befitted the second child of France, heir to the throne until Louis sired a child—which of course, Louis being Louis, he had done, except the child wasn’t born yet, and in this year of 1661 many things could happen.
    “Let me reward you. What do you wish, my friend?” Philippe was extremely pleased with himself, with having beaten the sacred, the semi-holy, the one and only Louis in a duel. “Anything. An orange tree. A silver box. A jade vase—”
    “A walk with your wife in tonight’s twilight before His Majesty stakes his claim.”
    “Done. That will irritate him, won’t it? I’ve bested him there, too.”
    “Indeed you have, Monsieur.”
    And then his friend, noble and privileged, arrogant and self-sufficient, this son of a duke and marshall of France, bowed and walked down the broad stone steps, weaving in and out of men, leaving without waiting for the king’s dismissal or Philippe’s, for that matter.
    Several of the young men on the steps watched his exit, half-admiring, half-scorning his haughtiness. Since the death of the cardinal, his majesty the king seemed to notice deference, or the lack of it, more than he had previously. Some of the bolder among them grumbled that Louis might as well put his royal seal on their backsides, as if they were cattle. But others said, no,