The Hurlyburly's Husband by Jean Teulé

her arms around one of her mother’s as she sat with her palms face down on her lap.
    The little girl rubbed her cheek against her mother’s elbow. Eyes closed, she seemed to be breathing again, as if all the time that this maternal warmth had been in Versailles she had been living in a state of breathlessness. Her father understood. He, too, loved to caress Athénaïs. She was so gracious, the most beautiful woman in all of France – as perfect as the idealised stone statues seen only in the royal parks. And this creature was his wife! He could have wept for happiness. The perfect oval of Athénaïs’s face; her high blond eyebrows; her mouth that puckered comically whenever she was astonished or thoughtful; all this belonged to him.
    Her mind no doubt still full of gondola processions along the Grand Canal, her bored gaze now lingered on her shabby home in Rue Taranne. She despaired of the peeling grey-green walls; the broken skirting boards the colour of crushed raspberry saddened her; the worn leather strap chairs seemed to bind her hand and foot; the threadbare Moses tapestry dispirited her and the sight of the black tannin of the old-fashioned furniture was like a long-forgotten nightmare. Her daughter bored her, clinging to her like that. She pushed her away: ‘Stop it now!’ then declared to her husband, ‘We must find a solution. You will be at the Spanish border and I will be at court; I shan’t be able to look after two children.’
    ‘Would you like me to take Marie-Christine to Bonnefont on my way to Roussillon? My mother can look after her.’
    Athénaïs did not reply. She felt, stirring within her, aspirations towards another existence; she was already impatient to be going from fête to fête in His Majesty’s wake. She murmured, ‘One day there were gusts of rain and the Sun King removed his hat and placed it on my head before the astonished courtiers and led me back to the Palais.’
    ‘What spell have you cast on the monarch?’
    Louis-Henri watched as his blonde became paler than the pearls around her neck.
    ‘Are you wearing a new necklace? Is it also the King who…’
    Happy, he struck the table with his two large paws.
    ‘Such consideration! A title as lady-in-waiting, a Parisian succession, a helping hat in a shower, a string of pearls … And presently I shall have my colonel’s brevet! At last His Majesty has given up his hostility towards my family and has restored it to its former favour.’
    He stood up; a ray of sun left a broad swathe of light on the uneven grey tiles. He went and opened the window, and in the beam of light he exalted the diurnal star. His wife watched as he called out, Vive le roi! ’

12.
    Athénaïs found herself staying for longer and longer periods in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, at the Château de Marly, or at Versailles, returning later and later to her marital home. Her husband did not take offence. He sat patiently through the succession of grey days in the little apartment, now virtually deserted by his spouse. He was waiting for the War of Devolution against Spain and philosophically whiled away his ennui without his wife: she was off in an orbit circling ever nearer to the Sun King. One evening when she returned displaying a dizzying décolletage, Madame Larivière was watching from the landing and, as Athénaïs went by in the stairway, she grumbled to Dorothée, ‘Making such a display of her breast merely broadcasts the fact that the creature is for hire.’
    Louis-Henri was in the salon standing over the maps of the Pyrenees he had unrolled on the gaming table, holding a glass of water. Just as he was lifting the glass to his lips, his wife entered the room. He saw her eyes were lowered. She had not changed colour, but he who knew her well found her discomfited all the same.
    ‘Louis-Henri, I have a favour to request of you, but you must grant it me. Should you fail to, I confess I should be most vexed.’
    Athénaïs wanted to leave the court