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an out-of-breath footman would arrive with an edict
to replace it with another one. The messengers were
also overworked, running back-and-forth all morning
in the Rion Relay. As their footsteps echoed while
dashing through the vast gallery where Ruben’s Medici
paintings were hung, they must have looked up at
Hermes in “Education of the Princess” and wished for
his wings. If these servants had been around for the
French Revolution later in the century, they probably
would have thought the guillotine was too good for
the Duchess and her likes.
Apparently the Duchess’s culinary staff had it no
easier, because by all reports she was as infatuated
with food as she was with Rion. Princess Palatine
described her “frightful gluttony”with these words:
“Every evening she sits down to table at eight or nine
o’ clock, and eats till three o’clock in the morning.” It
got to the point, Williams tells us, that she sold all her
saddle horses because “even a quiet canter in the Bois
de Boulogne could not be indulged without discomfort.”
I assume Williams is referring to the Duchess’s
discomfort, but what about the poor horses bearing the
burden? After pissing off the citizens of Paris for closing
the Luxembourg Gardens, at least she made her
horses happy by letting them get out from under her
weight. One might suspect that after late-night binging,
some of her clothes would no longer fit her. So
there could have been a silver-embroidered lining to
her weight gain if it limited the number of paces that
Rion could put her through.
Just as inexplicably as the Duchess submitted to the
will of Rion, and while still under his spell, one day
this profoundly irreligious woman suddenly acquired
a getaway apartment at the Carmelite convent in the
Faubourg Saint-Jacques. She then divided her time,
doubtless to the relief of her servants, between the palace
and convent. Though her motivation for this move
has puzzled historians, I have my own theory. How
could she not admire and even envy the good sisters
for wearing the same plain habit every single day? Although,
like the Duchess, they wore what they were
told to wear, at least they were spared the shenanigans
of being told to wear something different just after getting
dressed.
But then, why did she return to the demands of her
palace life, even for limited periods? I’m no expert
on the daily life of Carmelite nuns in 18th-century
France, but I’m quite sure their dinners didn’t last for
six hours. For you can fault the Duchess for letting a
man control her so completely, but unlike many more
“liberated” women today, she was never one to starve
herself for fashion.
n
FALL 2016