CHAPTER 64: THE TWO PARTIES

Dumas says:
History is to the novelist what a mountain is to a tourist. We take pictures from a distance, but we don't want to climb all up in there and end lost in the snowy expanses and eating our own feet in despair.
Similarly, we're not going to talk too much about the magnificence of the actual marriage of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. It happened in a fine evening, May 16, 1770, it was glorious and half of France sparkled in the aftermath. There.
After the wedding, the King Louis XV, (Robert De Niro), is like: "It's nine o'clock. My back hurts. Let the masses celebrate. I already had my own royal wedding. This deja vu is giving me the creeps. I need a nap."
The Dauphin (Jason Schwartzman) and the Dauphiness (Kirsten Dunst) retire to their nuptial quarters.
The crowds of spectators, however, throng the well-lit gardens and the courtyard of Versailles. They have been waiting for fireworks, a display of light and splendor up to then unprecedented. They're expecting a Pink Floyd laser show.
But nature does not always submit to our will. Like Alanis famously put it:
"It's like raaaaaaain on your wedding day."
Right after the first celebratory firework explodes in the sky, a deluge unfolds itself upon the gardens of Versailles, as if the lights had pierced the pregnant sky. The lines of candles along the lands are drowned, and people scatter like a flock of frightened birds. There was hail that night, too. Parisians were pelted all the way home, and the fireworks will have to wait.
An omen?
In the morning, the rain has lessened to a drizzle, but Versailles is hardly recognizable. The prettiness of the garden has turned to a muddle, lightning has whipped some trees down into crippled shapes. King Louis XV didn't have a good night at all. His back has been bothering him, and the rain seem to whisper songs against the monarchy. A more nagging nightmare has pursued him through the night.
He gets out of bed, and walks down the hall with a determined, manic glare on his face, and without knocking, pushes open the doors of the nuptial chamber.
What does he find?
To the left of the room, there's a startled Marie Antoinette, dressed in a long white unblemished robe, kneeling in prayer before an icon, perhaps asking for the end of the watering ram which has been beating against the window and has in fact slightly flooded the room.
All the way to the right, there is the Dauphin, silently rocking in an armchair. Not so so silent, actually, you can hear the splish-splash as he rocks on the flooded floor.
In the middle, there is the marriage bed. Neatly made. Untouched and virginal. Exactly the same way it was the night before.
Louis XV doesn't say a word to the "newly-weds". He closes the door. He sighs:
"Yeah, I kind of saw this coming. All that time spent cleaning clocks and prancing around the gardens in elaborate masquerade parties. Darn."

On the 30th of May, climactic conditions finally allow for the HALLUCINAtory fireworks. The city of Paris is ready to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin and the Dauphiness, the future King and Queen, by gathering around the Place Louis XV, centered on a tall equestrian statue of the King.

60,000 people come to gather around the statue of the King in his horsey, and there is a circular scaffold set up around it from which the fireworks are going to be shot TONIGHT TONIGHT TONIGHT. Everyone wants to get a good view: boys climb trees, women bring chairs with parasols, gypsies magically invent "perfect viewing stands for 2 bucks!" It's a big party with the usual barrage of opportunists out to sell "Marie Antoinette <3 Louis XVI" shirts.
And there's cops, of course.
Except that there's a problem. The French Guards have been let out for the day. Now, usually these cops are brutal thugs about preserving the peace, but because the City Government figures it's a Holiday, this celebration, it has decided to NOT pay the cops for the day. So the French Guards are brutal, thuggish, and, for once, they don't HAVE to preserve the peace. In fact, they get a chance to mingle with the crowds of thousands. Ever seen an off-duty cop out for mayhem?
So, gypsies shelling memorabilia, pick-pockets all about, disgruntled cops on the loose. Trouble is brewing.
But at first it looks peaceful enough, kind of like this David Teniers picture times six thousand.

The little gamins, that is, the ghetto kids of Paris, the boys that are let looose and see everything first, have already elected their position. Then the fancier nobles arrive in their carriages, some of them rent windows at the surrounding palaces to get the best views. People who don't have reservations or good seats just mingle with the crowd, and even though there's some time before the action starts, it's already very packed; pushers and shovers are finding the best angles for the big show, and if in the pushing and shoving some old lady gets trampled- isn't it worth it? For a better view of the spectacle?
After all, tonight's pyrotechnics are designed by a certain Master Ruggieri, who is more than ready to overcompensate for the earlier, wedding night fizzle-works over at Versailles. That scaffold around the statue is decorated with four huge Dolphins, each facing a cardinal point and from their mouths the muilti-colored lights will flare, symbolizing four great rivers- the Loire, the Rhone, the Seine, and the Rhine.
Oh, also, those dolphins spewing rivers? Supposed to symbolize the Dauphin spewing you-know-what all over Marie Antoinette.
Except we know the Dauphin hasn't spewed much of anything, has he?
The illuminated scaffold is like a cone, really, terminating on a tip on which rests the Earthly globe. It's a huge structure that, when fully sparkling will symbolyze coitus at a cosmic level quite quite well.
So there's the crowd, and the carriages, and it's hard to move. In fact, the incoming carriages make it very difficult for the crowd stationed here to move away from the scaffold should they have to- they're locked in- concentric circles of carriages press on and on. On the carriages, many uncovered, there are ladies who are flummoxed when the average jean who passes by their side whistles at them or mocks their prissyness. "Get down with the crowd, lady!"
One of those carriages, which arrives to the event just short of nine o'clock, is trying to make its way to the governor's door, but traffic is terribly jammed, and the horses are getting restless and not above chomping off a peasant's shoulder here and there. This carriage is swimming in a river of people.
"Swimming in a river of DIRTY people," says the Baron of Taverney, (Gene Hackman), for it is he who is in this carriage, and his daughter Andree (Keira Knightley) and his son Philip (Heath Ledger) are sitting before him as he rants: "Gypsies, tramps and thieves! Andree, don't you dare peek out of the window, you know some raggabumpkin will try to kiss you and will destroy your make-up!"
Andree says: "Father, if we could only get the carriage to turn to the left, I know we would have a good view, but as it is, I can barely see. I want to see pretty fireworks!"
The Baron of Taverney leans out of the window: "Coachman, my daughter wants you to turn to the left, aren't you listening?"
The coachman: "I can't move! If I do that, I'm going to crush ten people!"
The Baron of Taverney: "Make it fifteen crushed bodies. I'm a good tipper."
Philip and Andree: "DAD!"
The commoners mobbing right outside the carriage hear this: "Hey, who do you think you are, a Baron or something?"
The Baron of Taverney: "Damn right!" (gives them the finger)
People start getting menacing, banging at the door. Philip says: "Look what you started! I'm going out with the people, I can't stand it in here."
Andree: "No! You're going to get killed. It's a mob! People are trampling on each other!"
The Baron of Taverney: "If these people only knew I'm the Baron of Taverney! If they knew I'm dangling my daughter before the King's eye! I would get the best parking spot in the city!"
Andree: "What did you just say?"
Philip: "Yeah, I can't take anymore either. Sister, let's just join the crowd, I'll protect you."
The Baron of Taverney: "What, you're just going to leave me here all alone? Bah, I don't care about fireworks, I'm just here because everyone else is. Go on! Don't get herpes out there touching the peasants!"
Philip opens the door of the carriage, and the commoners stand back. He gets down, makes space for his sister, and she steps out. The people ooohhhh and awwwww. Andree is very beautiful, and beauty is respected even in the midst of mobs. She smiles at the effect.
Philip gallantly says: "Shall I escort you, sister?"
Andree puts her arm around his: "Of course, dear brother. See how they make way for us? How lucky."
Philip: "No, I think it's just that they're noticing a beautiful woman."
Andree: "Oh, please."
Behind them a third voice says: "You are, you know. Beautiful."
Andree turns.
Gilbert is standing there.
He lowers his head.
"I... I knew you would be here. I have been looking for you. I have been looking for you sooooo long. I know it seems wrong, I know I'm not worth it, but I've loved you for ages. And I've always come after you. And it's not like I'm stalking you, is more like, I'm just drawn to you by chance. And these things happen, and these parties happen, and it always ends up like this, just you and me. And there's a million people around, but it just feels like you and me. I think.... I think you should give me a chance. Because maybe it's meant to be. Because I love you."
Andree is stunned.
And then the fireworks start.