Marie Adelaide, continued

Saint-Simon's portrait of Marie Adelaide is that of a fairytale princess:" she flitted hither and thither like a nymph, and like a summer breeze, she seemed to have the gift of being many places at once and brought life and gaiety wherever she passed." Barry says that to anyone familiar with the difficult Duc de Saint-Simon,who even disdained the King on occasion, the praise, the unusual affection, is unexpected, but open-eyed.
"In appearance she was plain, (he writes of her later years) with cheeks that sagged, a forehead too prominent for beauty, an insignificant nose, and thick sensual lips, and eyebrows marked, and she had the prettiest, most eloquent eyes in all the world. Her few remaining teeth were badly decayed, about which she was the first to laugh at and remark on."

Barry says that it makes a fascinating contrast to the King's protrait of the princess at ten. Saint Simon continues, penetrating the "plainness" and explaining its appeal to contemporary taste.

"She had, however, a fair complexion, a beautiful skin, a small but admirable bust, and a long neck with the suspicion of a goiter, which was not unbecoming. The carriage of her head was noble; she was very stately and gracious in her manner and in the expression of her eyes, and she had the sweetest smile imaginable.....Her charm was beyond description....When you were with her, you were tempted to believe that she was wholly and solely on your side."

Saint-Simon, one suspects, suspended his own ordinarily acid disbelief in telling us the princess was as pleased to spend a quiet afternoon reading and sewing, or conversing with her "serious ladies" (her terms for the older women at the palace), as playing cards or dancing. But at Versailles appearances were the important reality, and maintianing them the supreme achievement. Eventually that may have been what the fading Sun King valued most in his Italian princess.

In truth, the princess was more comforter to the old King, now in his sixties, than companion to her young husband. The king seemed to need her more; he would sit unusually somber and silent, even at his public suppers, when her pleasure parties, which he himself encouraged, took her from his side. As a result, she was careful about mentioning them in his presence, and made a point of seeing him before and after. If she returned too late, she arranged to be with him when he awoke.

"The King desires Mme la Duchesse de Bourgogne to do exactly as she pleases from morn to night," the Marquis de Coulanges wrote to Mme de Sevigne's daughter, "and he feels rewarded if she is happy. So life is a constant succession of expeditions to Marly and Meudon, comings and goings to Paris for operas, balls, and masquerades, and the gentleman are practically at dagger's point trying to attract the princess's favor."

That was on February 2, 1700. The century of Louis XIV was still to take a long time dying.

This piece is Joseph Barry's article written in Horizon magazine, Spring, 67.