The Cat and the King Read Online Free PDF Page B

laughed too much. I have always noticed that the man who tells you that he could part with anything but his sense of humor usually lacks one. Well, Savonne never said that, but he could be counted on to burst into shrieks of laughter at all the silliest things in court. He did not do so in a way to hurt peoples’ feelings. On the contrary, he was very careful to wait until he was with a “safe” group before exploding. But he took too much pleasure in the ludicrous. It was more than a distraction; it became an evasion. Look around any court at your really great men, and you will find that two out of three have no sense of humor at all. It is not a necessary tool for the ambitious. Interpret everything men say in joke literally, and more than half the time you will hit their true meaning.
    Savonne was always influenced by my example, at times too much so. I was disconcerted that he resigned his commission when I did. In the first place, he had much greater aptitude as an officer; in the second, being still unmarried and more than averagely susceptible to the attractions of wine and women, he was a constant prey to the temptations of court life. However, he assured me that he was determined to be steady.
    â€œI shall model myself on the due de la Rochefoucauld,” he said. “I shall be the perfect courtier!”
    Rochefoucauld was so assiduous in his attendance to the king, never missing a lever or a coucher, that he was reputed to have slept only three nights outside a royal château in twenty years.
    â€œBut what is it you wish to obtain?” I inquired.
    â€œAnything there is to obtain!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “In Versailles, if you’re not busy getting something, you’re busy losing what you’ve got.”
    I had to admit there was some truth in that. Had not Gabrielle made almost the same point? There were times when the courtiers reminded me of my pack of beagles at La Ferté waiting for the daily ration of meat to be flung to them. But Savonne’s first real enthusiasm at Versailles turned out to be just the opposite of what this interchange had led me to anticipate. He showed distinct signs of becoming more devout, and I do not mean just the kind of devoutness that Madame de Maintenon had made fashionable. It was again, I suppose, his tendency to extremes.
    He was, as I have said, a cousin of Madame de Maintenon, and as she was always benevolent to her relatives, no matter how distant, he had occasional access to the rooms from which the venerable morganatic spouse of our august sovereign dominated the whole of the great palace, if not indeed the whole of Europe. It was here that the king, usually accompanied by a minister, was inclined to spend his evenings: he in his armchair, she in a kind of armless sedan-chair whose red curtains protected her from drafts, on either side of a small table covered with state papers. But it was not all work. Majesty would sometimes retire with his elderly partner for the rites of love, which she, by all reports (nearing seventy as she was!), found the source of scant enjoyment.
    At the point at which I write, Madame Guyon, the mystic or fake, depending on which side one took, was high in the favor of the mighty marquise, and my credulous friend was soon taken in by her, dazzled to be included in the select company which gathered to hear her in afternoon séances at Madame de Maintenon’s when the king was hunting.
    â€œYou should come with me once,” Savonne told me enthusiastically. “It’s an extraordinary experience. Here I am in the heart of mammon, perhaps the very earthiest spot in the whole earth, and what do I find? A holy of holies! We know that God is everywhere, but somehow one hadn’t expected to run into him at court!”
    This was decidedly distasteful to me. Unlike Savonne, I had no desire to talk about my religious experiences. I kept them strictly to myself. I went into