Chapter 4
Paris
October 1635
Bismarck didn’t have any idea how they would be received at the ducal residence and hadn’t wanted to ask. He hadn’t expected that within minutes after they presented their credentials, the duc de Rohan’s daughter would dash into the entryway and throw herself into Ruvigny’s arms with a squeal of “Henri! I haven’t seen you for ages!”
“Well, if it isn’t the itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny, seed pearl, all grown up.” Ruvigny responded to her enthusiasm with a brotherly hug, looking her over. “Our daisy has grown petals.”
In spite of the double entendre, Bismarck knew a brotherly hug when he saw one. He had four sisters to go along with his three brothers. Before he decided that he would rather embrace a military career than continue dragging around in the genteel poverty that had been their mother’s lot since the wars devastated the Altmark, shortly after his father’s death, he had lived in an affectionate household. Even though she, all of her offspring in tow, had made nightmarish treks that took them to Magdeburg, Hamburg, Salzwedel, and Braunschweig in search of semi-permanent refuge from the marauding armies, in sorrow and in joy the eight of them had hugged each other all the time. Their mother, even though she prided herself on exercising firm and serious discipline in their upbringing, had hugged them. For that matter, they had hugged their father, before he died. He shook his head, throwing off the memories as unsuited to his present duties.
As for itsy-bitsy, Ruvigny was not teasing. The young duchess was short. Pretty enough, he supposed, in the way that it’s hard for a girl to be ugly when she’s seventeen and healthy, with a clear complexion, but short.
Introductions followed, with the accompanying protocol, etiquette, and general necessary politesse, with the little duchess excusing her mother’s non-appearance as hostess on the vague grounds of, “She’s busy.”
As they migrated from the entryway toward a side salon, Bismarck whispered, “Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”
Ruvigny shrugged. “Oh. Well. About five years ago, during the Savoy campaign, La Valette sent me to Venice to recruit a regiment of light cavalry. The duke was there, then. I stayed with the Rohans.”
“And he paid attention to me,” the little duchess said. “I was twelve. He talked to me and teased me and told me stories about the campaigns and . . . and nobody else there ever paid any attention to me at all. Henri is my best friend ever.”
Bismarck added “has sharp ears” to his mental list of what he knew about the duc de Rohan’s daughter.
* * *
They woke up the next morning to still no senior hostess to welcome them. Ruvigny said that she probably was busy—she handled, with the assistance of business agents, of course, all of the duke’s financial and administrative affairs in France and had throughout his years of exile.
There was also what seemed like a mass invasion of the Hôtel de Sully by the staff of every theater in Paris. An expected invasion.
“Oh, Henri, you have to stay in Paris a little bit longer,” Marguerite proclaimed. “I won’t let you go. What need does that upstart Bernhard have for you right at the moment? Winter’s coming on. Nobody’s going to fight anybody in bad weather. We’re putting on a ballet for the court. Papa’s house on the Place Royale is nice, of course, but Grand-père is letting us use this one since he’s still in the country on house arrest. He bought it two years ago, brand new and already furnished; it’s so much bigger and nicer. We wouldn’t have any place to rehearse if he hadn’t. I’m dancing the lead role and everyone will be there—utterly everyone. You have to dance, too, Henri. Remember how we used to dance on the balcony of the house in Venice?”
“What I am is out of practice, little daisy,” Ruvigny protested. “I’ve been doing other things these last few years, remember?”
“Oh, poof. You can do it. Mama got Isaac de Benserade to script it. He’s the newest literary sensation this year.” She grabbed his arm and towed him in the direction of the ballroom, Bismarck trailing along behind.
The little duchess turned around. “You dance, of course, don’t you?”
“I would say that I’m modestly competent in a ballroom. I’ve never even seen a ballet.”
“Well, that’s disappointing. Autres temps, autres mœurs. I suppose that applies to other places as well as other eras. You can watch.”
Three hours of strenuous rehearsal later, the little duchess, not even mildly winded, plopped herself down next to Bismarck while Benserade and the choreographer once more put the male chorus through the final routine.
“Benserade is a slave driver. Even before the cast rehearsals started, he had me in here for five straight days, just learning my own part.”
“If you are as careful of your reputation and virtue as all say that you are, Mademoiselle, I am surprised that you spend all these hours in the company of a young man in his twenties, quite unaccompanied.” He looked around. “Well, unaccompanied except for a company of costumers, not to say several set designers, a half-dozen carpenters, and ten or so miscellaneous servants.”
Marguerite sniffed. “Benserade is no threat to my reputation. I could take him to bed and he wouldn’t be a threat to my virtue. Everyone knows he’s tilted. Everyone who matters, at least.”
Bismarck blinked.
“A bit out of plumb, like the king. But Louis only tilts this far,” she placed her elbow on the chair arm and moved it about ten degrees to the left, “ . . . and he, Louis, tilts both ways.” She moved it an equal number of degrees to the right. “Isaac’s all the way to the left.” Her arm went down to a right angle, parallel to the floor. “But that doesn’t keep him from being entertaining.”
“Out of plumb?”
The little duchess viewed Henri’s German friend with exasperation. “Are you so naïve? I am telling you that he is out of kilter. As our Provençals would say, gai. Slanted. The man is not straight. He might be a threat to the reputation of my cousins, Maximilien or François, but not to mine. Don’t you have a word for it in German?”
Bismarck almost strangled, but swallowed hard. “None that we use in the presence of respectable young ladies of 17 years, Your Grace.”
“How odd. In any case, soon everyone will know that he’s the best at planning galas and spectacular entertainments, and we will have sponsored him first. Someday he’ll be in their new Académie française. There’s hardly any doubt about that, and he’s one of ours—a Huguenot, I mean—so there is also no way that Maman will let Richelieu and Mazarin seize the glory of having discovered him for the Catholic party. This ballet will be a real coup for the Protestant cause.”
Bismarck had difficulty envisioning a ballet directed by a sodomite as a coup for the Protestant cause, but was tactful enough not to say so.
* * *
Some hours later, the young duchess disappeared to be dressed so that she might join her still-invisible mother for a yet-unspecified mandatory social occasion.
Ruvigny and Bismarck headed off for a tavern, to meet some of Ruvigny’s old friends from his first years in the Royal Guards in Paris. Who were late, of course. They ordered ales while they waited.
“I had no idea you were on such close terms with the Rohans,” August said, shoving his mug around the table and leaving a wet streak.
“It’s not the Rohans,” Henri answered. “I don’t know the duke very well and I’ve never presumed on any acquaintance with him for advancement in the service of Grand Duke Bernhard. It’s the family of the senior duchess—that is, it’s the Béthunes who are our patrons. Our families have known each other just about forever. It was through her father, the duc de Sully, that my father got his sinecure as lieutenant-governor of the Bastille. I was three when Papa died, so I don’t remember, but Maman has repeated constantly to all of us, ever since, how much gratitude we owe to the Béthunes. Sully himself was godfather for my oldest brother, who died in the Royal Guards. Sully’s wife and one of his sons were godparents for my sister Rachel. For my little brother Cirné, too, but he died when he was no more than an infant.”
He shifted on the bench. “I’m not personally comfortable with Rohan’s politics. At the siege of La Rochelle, I was with the royal forces. If the Huguenots have any hope of surviving in France, they’ll be better off practicing a policy of ‘respect the crown and placate the king’ rather than rebelling.”
“Doesn’t Peter, in the Epistle, say ‘honor the king’ rather than ‘placate the king’?”
“At the French court, it’s ‘placate the king.’ Not that such an approach succeeded either, according to the up-time books. Nor does competence. Sully is still out of favor. Nobody loved him when he was chief minister, even though he perhaps did more for France than anyone else who served Henri IV. The Catholics hated him because he was Huguenot and the Huguenots hated him because he remained loyal to the crown after Henry of Navarre decided that Paris was worth a mass.”
Bismarck nodded. “It’s hard to deal rationally with fanatics. The electors of Brandenburg did better, I think, when they let their subjects remain Lutheran even though they converted to Calvinism a couple of decades ago. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio that has governed the Holy Roman Empire since the Peace of Augsburg doesn’t require that subjects must be of the same faith of their ruler, actually—it only states that the ruler gets to decide. He can tolerate religious dissent if he wants to.” He grinned. “Or if it’s expedient; think how the up-timers have boxed Gustavus in on that issue.”
* * *
The elder duchess appeared at breakfast the next morning, not apologizing for anything, but making a fuss over Ruvigny. She wasn’t bad looking, Bismarck thought, for a woman who must be past forty and who had borne ten children. But nowhere nearly as good looking as his own mother, who had borne eight. Mutti must be a dozen or so years older than the duchess. The last time he had seen her, which was close to ten years ago now, she would have been about the same age as the woman to whom he was making a bow in this year of 1635. She had looked a lot younger and healthier, in spite of all the troubles of the war.
Making a fuss over Ruvigny stopped the instant he carried out their mission and handed over Rohan’s letter. The duchess did not respond to it with appropriate wifely compliance, much less biblical submissiveness. Her reaction was more along the lines of indignation amounting to anger. Fury, perhaps. Even the ire of the classical Furies themselves.
“No way,” she screamed at Ruvigny. “So ‘chaos is coming.’ I am quite prepared to manipulate, to the benefit of Rohan, any political advantage that is to be attained from looming chaos, but I can only do that in Paris. So ‘danger lurks.’ I am not prepared to abandon the court. Nor will I agree to send away my daughter, who is at long last getting old enough to play her own part and therefore belongs at the center of the world, in Paris, and not in the boondocks of the Free County of Burgundy. Doesn’t he think I am capable of protecting her from some forced Catholic marriage?”
No one of any importance, she finished, ever went to Besançon. Or ever would, in all probability. Not within her lifetime.
After which she flounced out.
“That went a lot better than I expected,” Ruvigny said, “considering that the duke pointed out that in the other world, where the encyclopedia was written, she did not manage to protect Marguerite from such a marriage.”
Bismark thought that the French ate breakfast too late. He had practically starved before food appeared on the table.
The breakfast, as late as it was, didn’t last long because there was another rehearsal, to which he was again relegated to being a spectator and involuntary recipient of the female lead’s constant chatter at those times she was not onstage. Today, she was trying to explain her mother. “Because I do not want you to think poorly of her, M. von Bismarck. Henri, of course, already knows it all. He lived through a lot of it. Not when she got married, of course, because he wasn’t even born yet.
“She was ten years old when the late king—Henri IV, that is—commanded that she should marry my father. Not just be betrothed to him, at that age, which would not have been so unusual, but marry him. The ceremony was in the temple at Ablon. She wore a white dress, and some joker asked, loud enough for the other guests to hear, ‘And who is it that presents this child for baptism?’ Papa was 25. He went back to the army and Maman got to live with her mother-in-law.”
She stopped. “How old were you when you got married, M. von Bismarck?”
“I’m not married. I’m 25 and I can’t afford to get married, any more than Ruvigny over there in the chorus line can. Maybe not ever.”
“Do you have a mistress?”
“If I could afford a mistress, I could afford a wife, and I would much rather have a wife, I assure you.”
“Does Henri have a mistress?”
“No, Mademoiselle.”
“Oh, good. But then Maman grew up and became pretty, with those big eyes, high cheekbones, and little pixie curls fluffing around her headband. She isn’t quite so pretty any more, but she is very old now. She was 41 on her last birthday. By the time she grew up, though, Henri IV was dead and the Rohans were in revolt again. Maman has always been fiercely loyal to Papa. She has defended the Rohan political cause tirelessly to the court; she has raised immense amounts of money for his ventures, even when she and my grandfather thought they were too risky.
“And, of course, she had to bear him children after she grew up. I am certainly legitimate,” the little duchess said proudly. “That is why Papa is so concerned about my marriage and sent the letter that has irritated Maman so much, you understand. Uncle Soubise has no children at all, so I am the only hope for continuing Rohan. Papa can be sure that I am the legitimate heiress of all that Rohan represents. It is true that Maman is volatile, but she was quite conscientious about her behavior until Papa gave up begetting. She didn’t take lovers until after that.”
Bismarck could not think of a tactful reply. At least, not one that was relevant.
At which point, Benserade and the choreographer beckoned her back onstage.
Bismarck hoped that they would have lunch, or maybe dinner, or at least a snack, pretty soon, but was afraid that they wouldn’t. It was a mystery why the dancers, whether ladies-in-waiting and courtiers or actors and ballerinas, had not been reduced to skeletons.
The next day was more of the same. A ballet in Paris appeared to involve as much in the way of logistics as a minor military campaign. The little duchess and the ladies-in-waiting, and the men of course, danced in the traditional style, but the ballerinas hired from the theater were doing two pieces in the modern en pointe style that the up-timers had introduced. Since their presentations meant that the other female dancers were offstage quite a bit, though both the courtiers and actors partnered the professionals in their display, Bismarck was subjected to more chatter.
“The night of the ballet, you will be presented to M. de Gondi. Be careful. He is Maman’s current lover and prone to take offence at the slightest thing he can interpret to be a discourtesy. Also, he has a retinue of favorites who follow him around and take offense on his behalf. Henri fought some duels when he was younger, before I ever met him, but I do believe that he has outgrown it. It would not be good if either you or he got trapped into one while you are here and it would not be beyond some of the courtiers to entrap you into having to fight one, just to embarrass Papa. Don’t trust anyone. That’s the best. Anyone, even one you think is now your closest friend or most committed ally, may well betray you tomorrow if some advantage is to be obtained from it.”
“Lover?” Bismarck had learned most of his French in a classroom and was not certain of his comprehension at times, particularly when a conversational partner spoke with excessive rapidity. Which all the French seemed to do most of the time. He wanted to be sure that he had heard clearly.
“Yes, her current lover. Everyone says that Maman is quite fastidious. It’s not as if she’s one of those women who claim to be ladies but fuck the footmen for fun. She takes one lover at a time and all of them have been influential members of the highest nobility.” Marguerite sighed. “Even though in the case of the Nogarets, she chose two brothers at different times, the cardinal de La Valette and the comte de Candale.” She wrinkled her nose. “Which is . . . not fastidious.”
Bismarck’s eyebrows were practically up in his receding three-point hairline.
“So what was I saying? It’s not as if Maman has a reputation like la Chalaise, for whom a man published a poem in praise of her slit.” She punctuated that by nodding her head firmly. “Her husband, the comte de Chalais, killed the comte de Pontguibault in a duel because of that poem. It was a big scandal at the time—that must have been about a dozen years ago. But Chalais was beheaded later on, because la Chevreuse seduced him into one of her conspiracies against Richelieu. She’s a very distant cousin of Papa’s, from the Rohan-Montbezon line.” She paused. “You will remember what I told you about duels, won’t you? It will cause too many complications if you or Henri fight a duel while you are staying with us.”
Bismarck blinked in the face of this never-ending flood of gossip. It might be true that nobody ever paid attention to her, because when she did have a captive listener, her mouth overflowed with everything she was thinking. Much of which, under the surface frivolity, was world-weary and far more cynical than a girl her age should be, he thought. If anybody asked him, which nobody would.
At least, when the day of the performance arrived, he would be in the audience rather than backstage. He hoped. He hoped, but he knew that sometimes hope was in vain. He had seen the modern English translation of the Bible in the school library when he was studying at Helmstedt. Well, not the modern of the up-timers but the modern of his own day, the one sponsored by King James. The passage Henri had quoted on their ride to Paris had not employed “useless” or “futile.” “Vanity,” the Teacher had written, speaking the Word of God. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Solomon must have visited Paris at some stage of his career. But, then, he had been presiding over a royal court of his own. With wives in the plural, concubines by the hundreds, and troubles of his own. Monogamy had a lot to be said in its favor.
Marguerite propped her chin on the heel of her hand. “And then there’s Tancrède.”
“Another . . . ah . . . lover?”
The little duchess managed to convey jaded disgust with one short glance. “My half-brother.”
“The duke also has affairs? An affair? His junior officers, at least during my term of service, have not been aware of any.”
“My maternal half-brother. He’s six. Trust me, M. von Bismarck. One has not lived until one has ridden, most of the time in a closed carriage, from Venice to Paris, with a pregnant, motion sick, middle-aged woman who is expecting an illegitimate child and knows that it will have to be fostered out because her husband draws the line at accepting a possible male heir whom he has not fathered. After such a wonderful journey, it’s hard for a girl to retain any illusions about the joyous and sacred nature of motherhood, no matter what the preachers say in their sermons.” She paused. “Candale begat the boy. He and Maman slept together in my own father’s house. That’s bad taste, don’t you think?”
Bismarck nodded. Bad taste was the least of it, from the perspective of a devout man.
“But at least she converted him to Calvinism before she slept with him,” Marguerite added more cheerfully. “That annoyed his brother the cardinal, not that the cardinal-archbishop of Toulouse is at all pious: he has never taken Catholic holy orders and has made his career in the army. Richelieu loathes Maman. He calls her une des dames brouillonnes de la cour, one of the mischief-making ladies of the court.”
Even ballet rehearsals come to an end.
“It’s true, what she said when we arrived, isn’t it?” Bismarck asked that evening as he finished taking off his boots and leaned back, wiggling his toes.
“Huh?” Ruvigny was half-asleep already.
“That nobody other than you paid any attention to her when she was in Venice and twelve years old. Nobody pays any attention to her now that she’s in Paris and seventeen years old, as far as I can see, other than dressing her, rehearsing her for that ballet, and parading her around to salons and court appearances. She’s the greatest heiress in all of France and she’s neglected. Nobody listens to her at all. Nobody even tries to provide her with some kind of . . . moral compass. Not as far as I have seen.”
“Not since her grandmother Rohan died,” Ruvigny answered. “That must be five years ago, now. The duchess’ parents, Sully and his wife, are still alive, but Marguerite doesn’t see much of them. He’s in retirement in the country, which is a nice way to describe house arrest, writing his memoirs and dreaming of his ‘great design’ for a federation of all Christian nations.”