I Am Louis XIV

(Notes of a traveler)

It is Sunday, March 21, 2021, my readers, I am in Paris, ready to retrace the famous "Adonis" road.

Ladies and gentlemen, although I come from an ancient country with a history of thousands of years, for the Europeans, no matter whether it is love, romance, or a heavy but prosperous history, except France, or in other words, except under the rule of the Sun King There is nowhere else to be sought again and again outside of France.

When I was in Paris and Versailles, I had already visited the final home of the French royal family - Saint-Denis Cathedral, and I also strolled in the Pigeon Garden, the place where Mrs. Montespan hangs out most often. I had the honor to pay a visit to Aubigne The St. Jakarta Women's Convent where the lady practices invisibility is also the location of the first women's university in France. The Duchess of Montpensier and the Duchess of Orleans are also the hosts and sponsors of this school. It is said that they have worked as teachers and students here , their statues—along with Madame Aubigne, Madame Lafayette, the former Swedish Queen Christina and other famous women at that time—stand in the center of a huge pool in the image of nine muses.

It is said that there should have been a statue of the sun god in the middle, but because of well-known reasons (please allow me to laugh), the then sun king Louis XIV did not arrange such a scene for the sake of the reputation of the ladies. However, unofficial history According to the legend, there have always been people who have said that among the nine muses, at least three wives did have a wonderful love story with the king.

The first to bear the brunt is the founder of the university, Mrs. Aubigne. She has always been rumored to be the king's secret "royal lady", that is to say, the king's lover who has not been legally and publicly recognized. Some people insist that the king loves her. Love is abnormal, and even insisted on holding an unknown wedding with her in the last stage of life, but I think... this should be unlikely.

After Louis XIV created an extremely large and glorious kingdom, he was nearly sixty years old. After a grand triumph, he built the Trianon Palace on the side of Versailles. This palace A large number of marble and ceramics are used in the palace. I don’t mean the decorations and utensils. As we all know, the Sun King is a person who attaches great importance to personal hygiene. The Palace of Versailles is the first palace in Europe with a complete and meticulous water system. There are independent sanitary facilities, and public spaces such as the Venus Hall also have attached toilets-but the toilets in the Palace of Versailles still follow the style of the time, the walls and floors are made of wood, and the utensils are made of brass. Trianon is mostly made of ceramics.

Before Louis XIV, although the ceramic industry in France was also well-known, it was still unable to compare with the ceramics in the East. It is said that because of the different soil quality, Europa ceramics were difficult to produce beautiful colors, and the color and texture were also different. But at the request of the Sun King, his scholars dug up for him at Limousin, chiefly at Limoges, that clay which was once the exclusive property of oriental ceramics, so that those who worked for the king in the construction of Versailles It is logical for the Moris people to transform their wood and metal workshops into ceramic workshops or workshops.

Since then, the ceramic industry in France has taken off as if it had wings, even surpassing the original glass industry. Ceramics have also changed from luxury decorations to expensive daily necessities...for the people at that time.

The bathroom of the Trianon Palace, after five hundred years, is still miraculously usable. Of course, it is impossible for ordinary tourists to use it-but every once in a while, a librarian will turn on the fountain like Open the faucets of the washbasin, toilet and bathtub one by one like the water valve of the pool, and show them to tourists. The bathroom facilities at that time were almost the same as ours now, but they were much more refined and gorgeous.

In addition to the bathroom, the Trianon Palace also has various decorations such as ceramic bottles, mosaic flowers, and sculptures, some of which were produced in France and some came from the far east. After the empire established diplomatic relations with France, Ming's mission brought gifts-two huge dragon bottles, which can almost hold an adult male.

Ah, forgive me for going too far here—I meant to say that, as they say, the Louvre is the black iron branches of the palaces of France, Fontainebleau the silver leaves, Versailles the gold and The flowers of diamonds, then this Trianon Palace is the fruit of ivory. When you walk among the dark floors, wainscoting and soft porcelain, all you can feel is a sense of infinity. The calm and tranquility of the home.

At that time, the Sun King may need this, and in this palace, apart from him, there is no room belonging to the royal wife or an ambiguous person, only the queen mother, the suite between the queen and the prince's brother, the Duke of Orleans , where Queen Teresa's room is separated from the king's room by only one door. They spent the last thirty years of their lives here, and Queen Teresa died just six months after the King.

The Sun King may not have love for the queen, but he always maintained 120,000 respects and trust in her. This was undeniable by anyone at the time. Even during the war between France and Spain, the queen also She has always been sheltered under the king's wings, whether it is the wife of the younger brother, the Duchess of Orleans, or the Duchess of Montpensier, or the king's royal wife... Except for the Queen Mother, there is no one in the Palace of Versailles. People can match them.

For six months after Queen Teresa died, the Sun King wore black and jewelry of black onyx, black opal, or jet in mourning for his wife. For several weeks, Trianon and There were no balls at Versailles, the playwright Molière wrote in his diary—a melancholy atmosphere hung over everyone like a veil of mourning.

If it is said that during these six months, Louis XIV impulsively held the so-called "secret wedding" with another woman, even if he said that he wanted to take away the pain caused by his wife's death, it is hard for me to believe that not only From the perspective of emotions, even from the perspective of personal morality and self-discipline, the Sun King would not leave such a black spot on himself at the last moment of his life.

In the letters exhibited by the royal family, the exchange between the king and Mrs. Aubigne is also extremely rational and even cruel. It is not so much that the lady has an affair with the king, but that they are more like kings. With ministers, or envoys, this Madame Aubigne apparently lingered in Paris and Versailles for some time as an emissary of the Church or Innocent XI.

The lady did not have any signs of suspected pregnancy and childbirth.

But a French friend of mine, whose name is also Louis, said that there are two statues among them, one whose face is half-hidden by a raised robe, and the other who is lying on the ground holding a lily, with his eyes closed, The one who seems to be taking a nap, the former one is the legendary Lady Milady who is often named—a writer wrote her into the book and wrote her as the secret agent of the Bishop of Mazarin. In fact, this lady is more likely An agent of Louis XIV, who spent her final years at the Italian court—and given that the new king of Italy is likely to have extremely close ties to the Bourbons, it is possible that she simply changed her place of employment.

The latter one, as we all know, has an ancient tradition among sculptors and painters in Europa. Although it is no longer available in modern times, at that time, painting or carving a person as asleep meant that the person had died. died.

This lady is also a royal lady who has not been officially recognized. It is said that she and the king also had a secret wedding - I think this is very likely, because they were very young at the time of the secret wedding, just like Romeo and Juliet, One is sixteen years old and the other is fourteen years old. They are young and have no guesses, childhood sweethearts-Marie Mancini grew up with Louis XIV in German-en-Laye.

There are other things like ummm, sorry, I can't say clearly here-that beautiful young man was originally the Duke of Colonna, and the son-in-law of the daughter of the Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Gaston. Although this identity allowed him to obtain an orthodox certificate, in order to seek the right to rule Naples and even the whole of Italy, but people agreed that he should be the son of Louis XIV and Mary Mancini. In the next twenty or thirty years, we will spare no effort to pave a bright and smooth path for it.

What's more, we all know that every year on the birthday of the Sun King, the Bourbon family has a private family gathering. Well, every time that time comes, the royal family members of this peninsula will also disappear for a while for various reasons ...

Well, I won’t say much about this issue for the time being. The love component of this group portrait is not as good as other places in Paris or Versailles, such as the chapel built by Louis XV and Queen Isabella beside the Grand Canal , the suite in the Bastille (allowing the wife to follow the husband, or the husband to follow the wife to serve the sentence), the kiss marks and touch marks left by the ladies and gentlemen on the statue of Maupassant... I have admired and admired all these, Finally, like many people, I am ready to embark on the pilgrimage road that belongs only to lovers-the road of Adonis.

Adonis is the god of spring and plants in Greek mythology. He was loved by two goddesses, the queen of the underworld and the god of love. Unfortunately, he was killed by a wild boar during a hunt. At that time, Aphrodite, the god of love, Knowing this, he ran barefoot to the place where he died. On the way, his toes were pierced by thorns, and the blood left stained the white roses. Since then, there have been red roses in the world...

Red rose has therefore become the flower of people's love.

But maybe it’s because I often think too much, or it’s possible that there seems to be only me at the gathering point… I always feel that this road has nothing to do with love except for the blood.

Anyone who has read history books knows that in the war of succession to the Spanish throne, King William I of Prussia was a model of the vane. He swayed between the king of France and the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He has gained a lot of benefits-some people may despise his behavior, because from a legal point of view, he should be loyal to Emperor Leopold I, and from a moral point of view, he should be loyal to his in-law Louis XIV. What about this king? However, while he obtained the permission to be promoted from the principality to the kingdom from Leopold I through half-threatening and half-trading, he also frankly confessed to Louis XIV and his brother, that is, his son's father-in-law, that he would Had to choose "neutrality" for the time being—hell neutrality.

But you must also admit that William I's shamelessness and rascality did lay a solid foundation for the future Prussia. His country was the least affected in this war, but he got no less benefits than anyone else. His son She married the eldest daughter of the Duke of Orleans, the richest man in France, with a generous dowry and a territory specially gifted by the French king. Not only that, this princess is also young, beautiful, intelligent and far-sighted.

Let alone this marriage abroad, even in China, there are countless opponents.

Even though Leopold I was promised to take half of the princess's dowry to repay his heavy debt to France, he still hesitated and felt resentful. As for the other allies of the Anti-French Alliance, or the enemies of Prussia, they do not want to see this marriage succeed; .

William I has always been better at being sharp-eyed and decisive. Although Louis XIV did not regret the marriage, he already smelled bad smells—asked for an audience late at night—that is, asked the king to reconsider At the time of the princess's wedding, Prince Frederick I of Prussia also came to Paris.